


Build a Life From Scratch

by OtherCat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Assholes being assholes together, Bro Strider is a Trashfire, Canon-Typical Violence, Godstuck, Grand Highblood is Kind of Horrible, Mild Gore, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Neuro divergent Bro Strider, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Canon, The Handmaid Orchestrated Most of the Horrible Things GHB Did
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-04 18:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14026083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: In which Bro has an existential crisis, the Grand Highblood is in the middle of having a Crisis of Faith and the Demoness is going to cut the next bitch who calls her “Handmaid.”





	1. Clan of the Cave Hobbits

So, the first thing is, you wake up. Starting a story with someone waking up is a cliché. It’s not a thing you’re supposed to do. But this is you. Waking up and blinking at the sunlight between the trees. You are lying on the ground, which feels soft and damp. At ground level are ferns, various shrubberies, mosses and flowers. You don’t know the names of anything you’re looking at. The trees are not easy trees; maple, or oak. They are definitely deciduous though, and the climate is temperate (as far as you can tell from ironically watched nature programs).

You are as naked as some short asshole in a fantasy series where citizenship means you can wear clothes.

Your head is empty. 

You have to think about the latter for a moment. And maybe the former, because well, naked in the middle of a mysterious forest. This is generally a thing that happens in certain fantasy novels you may have read when you were a kid in your favorite foster home. (Not that you’d ever admit it out loud since that foster home also involved getting dragged to church every Sunday. Also, Pam kept trying to get you to give up Cal.) You will go to great lengths for talking unicorns, horses, and bizarre sexual interactions. The games may have also piqued your interest in the series. You’re wandering in your head, and nothing is pulling you back to the subject, which is naked, in the middle of nowhere.

You sit up slowly, taking stock. You are entirely in one piece, no scars, and your hands free of calluses. (You remember being run through with a sword, the knowledge everything had fallen apart, the thing in your head snarling.) And your head is completely empty. And Cal is nowhere in sight. Your chest tightens and you fold up, you feel hot and sick, sweat sheening your arms, sliding down your back. Cal is gone and your head is empty. You think you’re maybe going to throw up, but there’s nothing to throw up so you just gag on acid and try to breathe while it feels like your gut has turned into a nest of snakes. Your face is wet with sweat or tears and you rock back and forth for a while.

The moment passes, the feeling of sickness fades. Vague thoughts surface: the kid, where was the kid? There was a kid, right? The kid and the weird floating bird kid who tried to help you against the chessman-bird-dog-thing. You think of Texas summer heat and the roof. And you think about the kid. (You think about Pam frowning over the lack of food, the lack of safety and security. Pam is long dead and wouldn’t understand what you were trying to accomplish. Wouldn’t understand the game that would render everything she believed in irrelevant. You don’t know why you’re thinking of her. You haven’t thought about her in years, but now you can almost see her; a short, round woman with thinning hair going gray at the temples. She’d had brown eyes.)

Where was Cal? Why does your head feel empty?

Your stomach also feels empty, and you aren’t sure what’s safe to eat around here. You rise up on legs that feel shakier than they should. The ground is uneven, but you try to walk. The undergrowth prickles against your skin, and you hope you aren’t brushing through the equivalent of poison ivy or sumac. There’s insects and birds, and the occasional fast, bounding shape heading away from your presence. (You are more than a little worried about predators, and about lacking any kind of protection from same.) Downhill leads you to the sound of water and the thirst that had been burning away at you for the past however many miles makes you hurry toward the sound. When you reach the bank of the stream you drop down to your knees. You’re about to scoop up a double handful of water when someone throws a fucking rock at you. It hits you in the back and you yelp, whirling around. 

There’s a girl. Something like a girl standing a few yards away. She’s tall, has gray skin, huge curling horns that look too big for her to be standing under their weight. She has short black curly hair that looks like it had been mostly hacked off with a knife and dark eyes--you’re too far away to make out their color as anything other than dark. She’s wearing a leather skirt and tunic that has a feeling that’s more functional than sexy. There’s a bundle of some kind at her feet. 

“What the fuck?” is the only thing that comes to mind to say. 

“I should say that,” the girl says. Sort of says. Under the words you’re hearing in English are words in some other language you don’t know. “You want to be sick, go ahead and drink, foul yourself from both ends.” She smiles like a razor. 

“Water’s clear?”

“Upstream a big prey beast fell in the water, too big for hunter beasts or carrion beasts to carry off easily. It rotted and sent foulness downstream. You drank and then gut pains started. You took fever and saw shit and broke your head falling down.” She says it not like it’s something she’s predicting, but like she’s telling you that this is something that already happened.

The realization is somehow more disturbing than anything else at the moment. “Well aren’t you a Good Samaritan,” you say slowly. “Think you coulda told me instead of throwing a rock?” 

“No,” the girl says, smiling like she thinks she’s said something that’s fucking hilarious. You would definitely beg to differ on that. She picks up the bundle at her feet and tosses it gently toward you. It lands about a foot away. It’s a bundle of leather. You stoop to pick it up and find it’s a leather skirt and tunic like the one the girl’s wearing, and an honest to god flint knife. The blade’s about six inches long, and the hilt is wrapped in a leather cord. “Use ties,” she says, showing you a place in the waistband of her skirt that has a “ties” and a flint knife similar to yours held in place by them. 

“Okay.” So the skirt ties off with a leather cord draw string. There are ties in the waist band for apparently knives and you think maybe also pouches or something. The tunic sleeves end at about the elbow, and it laces up the front with more leather cord. No shoes are included in the ensemble, and you can see that the girl isn’t wearing any. 

“Come with me,” she says. 

“Sure why don’t I follow the mysterious gray demon lady off into the unknown,” you say, even though you don’t have a lot of--any--options right now.

“You have somewhere else to go?” She asks, and heads off into the woods. At a loss for anything else to do, you follow her. Up close her eyes are a warm garnet red and her sclera area gold yellow. It turns out she has a waterskin. The water is warm and tastes like ass, but is hopefully free of anything that sounds like dysentery from hell. You try to hand it back to her, but she lets you--makes you--keep it. 

You walk, and the sunlight above the trees shifts considerably. Your feet hurt, your legs hurt, and you go uphill and then downhill at least three times, and then turn something like a bend that opens up into a clearing. The ground dips down and then back up again, and where it comes back up there’s something like a roof sticking out of a hill. Near the house is a garden, and what’s either a well or a cistern. “You’re kind of tall to be a fucking hobbit,” you tell the girl. 

“Sleep under trees, if you don’t like,” she says, and heads down to her house. You follow, because you might as well, having gone this far. The door is pretty big, so is the actual house. As you get closer, you realize food is being cooked, and you are even hungrier than you were when you first woke up. 

The girl opens the door to her house and ducks inside, saying something loud that’s just a buzz in your ears. When you follow after her you have a moment of disorientation because there are two girls, absolutely identical standing by a fire pit in the center of the room. Then there’s just one girl. “Of course leave me to explain to the stupid clown,” the girl says glaring that the space formerly occupied by the other girl. 

“Hard crowd tonight,” you say. 

“Not you,” the girl says. She tilts her head deeper into the house. “Stupid _high blood_ clown.” This doesn’t explain a lot. The room’s lit by the fire in the pit, and the room is ventilated by the smoke hole and what look like a wicker grille covering holes in the roof. Meat is cooking on skewers over the fire, and something’s bubbling away in something like a leather pot. “Hot rocks from the fire,” she says, though you’d already figured out it was something like that. She shows you where to find what passes for dinnerware in the Neolithic: horn spoons and leather bowls, flat wood planks. (“I’ll figure out clay eventually,” she grumbles.)

She has you wash your hands twice before you touch the dinnerware or eat. (Cleanliness level: several hundred points above Clan of the Cave Bear.) The soap is soft and horrible and it feels like it’s trying to eat the skin off your hands. She only gives you a little of whatever had been cooking in the pot, a nutty smelling mush. “Wait, see if it makes you sick.” The meat is apparently safe for you to eat. You sample the food and wait a while to see if it makes you sick. When it doesn’t make you sick, you eat all of it. 

You both eat in silence at a table that’s basically a section of tree trunk polished smooth and set up on smooth river rocks. She doesn’t ask questions any more than her twin sister had. It’s some variation of either she’d not curious or she doesn’t care. You don’t ask any questions either. It’s quiet, except for the crackling of the fire, and the sounds of whatever kind of crickets and frogs live out in the forest. You jump a little and then pretend you didn’t at the sound of something howling off in the distance. (The girl doesn’t react.) 

The interior walls of the house are flat slabs of stone fit closely together without mortar. The floor is loose, coarse grained sand. It looks like someone took a piece of charcoal and sketched wild, abstract images on the walls. “Sooner or later he stop bitching about pigments,” she says. “Then my house look like fucking clown temple.” She rolls her eyes. 

“Shit hole could use some color,” grumbles a voice like a bass drum for the dark of the next room. (Rooms.) “You bitching about my art again, Handmaid?”

“You call me that again and see how I serve, Highblood,” the girl snarls.

The voice laughs, and a skittering feeling runs over your skin and down your spine. “Who fuck’s out there?” the voice asks. “That ain’t you Demoness. That ain’t a fucking troll. This mudball have sentient life after all?” 

“Has sentient life, just not here,” the girl--Demoness apparently--says. “Not yet.”

“Then who the fuck you breaking loaves with, geographically inclined rustblood?” 

“Stupid fucker who breaks his head open three weeks from now,” Demoness says with an indifferent glacier coldness you can’t help but admire. “Just woke up, so takes too long to make him right.”

“Woke up. You mean like you and me woke up?” 

“Come out and see, or are you sticking to your pile all spring like you did all winter?” 

“Like you were traipsing out and about in the dark season ice,” the voice grumbles. 

“Come out,” Demoness says. “I would threaten to give him your pile, but the rot from your maggot filled corpse would kill him, and my work all gone to waste.” 

“You are the nastiest little bitch,” the voice says. 

“Weak, hiding in your _miasma_ all winter made you weak,” Demoness says. 

“Motherfucking pale for you too,” the voice replies. There’s movement coming from the next room, followed by grumbling and cursing. 

“Demoness” is pretty tall. Six foot eight, and not thin. She’s big and curvy with a lot of muscle mass under a pad of fat. Her skin has a kind of armored look to it, and had a smooth gleam that made you half expect to see your reflection in it. What comes out of the back room is maybe ten, eleven feet tall, and that’s not including the towering horns and wild, long hair like unto an eighties hair band. This guy is also broad as a house and his eyes are an indigo-purple that almost seems to glow. He’s wearing the same kind of skirt the girl is, along with something that’s more like a vest than a tunic. The armored look Demoness has is even more evident with him. He looks hard, almost segmented, though he doesn’t have the same gleam Demoness has. 

“Highblood,” Demoness says. 

“It’s a soft little thing, isn’t it?” Highblood asks, looming over you. He reaches out a hand and-- 

\--you try not to be there--

\--but he’s faster than you--

\--And you freeze while he manhandles you. You’re frozen stiff and anything you might say is frozen behind a stone in your throat. Your heart however is going like a jackhammer. He moves your arms and legs, studies your joints, he touches your skin. He is so, so much colder than you. It’s weird and clinical, and it is way too much, he is way too close and he is manipulating your limbs like he wants to figure out the best way to tear you apart. 

He lets you go finally, and you just kind of drop in a folded up heap on the floor. Highblood starts to rumble something to Demoness, but you don’t understand what he’s saying. Everything is a white washed blur and there’s a knife in your hand and you don’t understand anything. You uncoil at Highblood and lunge knife first--

And he isn’t there. You whirl, _knowing,_ and this time you connect. It’s just a scratch, barely a scratch for this giant, blood thick and weird purple-blue. Then you are flying in the air and land on the far side of the firepit and Demoness holding back the giant with two slim white wands that are flickering a deep and furious red. “Yes poke at a damn sting tail and you’re surprised it stings! Stupid highblood fucker!” She screams up at the giant. 

The big guy backs up, hands up and palm outward. “Not touching him, not touching you,” he says. “See, this is me backing right the fuck up. No need for the ashen conciliations”

You would very much like to abscond, but you’re knocked breathless and your mind is still crawling and shuddering from the giant touching you, from attacking the giant. You don’t think anything’s broken; it was just one hell of a belly flop. Anything you might say at this point is stuck behind the stone in your throat. You fold up and shake, your brain a tangled mess, listening to the shouting that is only occasionally comprehensible. 

Demoness is snarling at Highblood. Highblood is talking fast and low, and under it is this deep humming sound that you are feeling more than hearing. You have no idea of what is going on or why he’s gone from fighting with you to trying to calm Demoness down. 

You realize that’s exactly what he’s doing. It hadn’t been the giant who’d knocked you across the room, it had been the _Demoness._ The giant, Highblood, treating him (you) like a curiosity, like something to be studied, taken apart, broken. She’s angry because she hadn’t brought Highblood a toy, she’d taken in someone who was like them. (You don’t see how. You really don’t see how.) She’s angry because Highblood had been fucking around and underestimated someone because they weren’t another _troll._ Weren’t another _highblood._ Highblood was a fucking moron who could have been killed and he was just fucking around like he thought it was a _game._

Demoness was right, Highblood is saying. He’d acted like the creature was tribute instead of a person. It had been so fascinatingly trolllike. He hadn’t planned on scaring it. He wasn’t going to hurt it. He had definitely underestimated it. Breathe girl, put down the fangs. Go check on the human, he’ll get his penitent ass out to the well for an ice cold scrub up.

“Go _drown,”_ Demoness growls, and Highblood absconds. Then she comes over and pokes you with one of the white wands. “You alive?” 

The stone is still pretty firmly lodged, so you grunt in more or less an affirmative, and bat at the wand. She steps back, and walks into the back of the house and emerges with a huge pile of bones, furs, rocks and who the fuck knows what else hovering behind her. This is not any more weird than anything else that’s happened since you woke up this morning. She opens the door and tosses all of it outside. “Clean your stinking pile!” She screams out the door, and shuts it. She glares at the door, and then turns back to you. “You tired?” 

“Yeah,” you manage to croak. 

She helps you to your feet, and takes you into the back, which is deeper into the hill, and a little lower than the main room. It’s a short tunnel that turns branches left and right. She goes right and the tunnel widens out into a room. Same stone walls and sand floor. Against one wall is a pile of dry grass covered by furs. There’s also a couple of shelves set in the wall with baskets full of clothes, bone, stone and wood tools. A few feet away from it is an area that looks like it was previously occupied by a similar pile with similar shelves and baskets. The light in the room is from little round candles set in niches in the wall. 

Demoness grabs some furs from the shelf, measures out a space about three steps away from her pile, and dumps the furs on the sand. “Sleep here,” she says.

You collapse down into the furs and drop right over the edge into sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Bro mentions is Split Infinity, part of the Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony.


	2. City Boy in the Big Woods

So, your hostess and her roommate-behemoth-boyfriend turn out to be nocturnal. You tend toward the nocturnal yourself, but your sleep schedule seems to have reset itself to something more diurnal. The first morning you wake up, your hostess is just settling into bed. Demoness makes sure you know where your knife is, and lets you know that food’s been left out for you. Then she blows out the candles and settles onto her pile. The big guy has apparently been asleep for a while now, because he’s sawing away at logs.

Once you eat, you immediately abscond from the hobbit hole and head for the trees. You don’t go far. Like the lady said, you don’t have anywhere better to be. There are so many questions, but you can’t ask them. They’re getting sucked away into the cavernous absence in your head. 

There’s no kid and there’s no Cal. There’s no goddamn electricity. (No goddamn computer. No goddamn sewing machine, no turn tables no music.) Instead there are trees in all directions and hills. You are surrounded by trees and plants you don’t recognize, animals and birds that are almost like animals you’ve seen in the zoo, or in books, or on nature programs, but not really, not quite. 

The first day you find a pond, a couple of streams. One stream is pretty close to the house, and has a fish trap. The second stream is further out, and widens out into a pond. You see animals that are something like deer. You see rabbits, bitty grey and black-striped squirrels and a round red rat creature with a long fuzzy tail. There are a lot of birds. Little song birds, a few kinds of tiny dove-like birds, and at one point you saw a hawk. You hear some kind of howling in the distance, and almost trip over a brown lynx-like cat that has no interest in sticking around.

You end up by the pond, listening to frogs and watching insects that look enough like dragonflies that you might as well call them dragonflies hovering over the water. One end of the pond is marshy and full of reeds; the end you’re on has a high bank with grass and ground that’s pretty solid. There’s a strong breeze that’s rippling the surface of the pond and hissing through the silver-green leaves of the trees nearest the water. It’s pretty chilly, and you are pretty sure this is a picture book representation of spring.

You’d like some answers, but you barely have questions. You remember the fight with the dog-jester- chess piece thing. You remember the kid, vibrant orange and just slightly transparent like a ghost fighting at your side. You remember the sword sticking out of you and you remember bleeding out. You remember emptying out. (Your head is empty and Cal is gone.) 

This is the lamest goddamn afterlife. 

(You are pretty sure you’re actually alive and you don’t know what to do with that information.) Did the kid win the game? If yes, why are you (apparently) in the middle of his reward? (If no, what the hell did that mean, besides failure?) You’re pretty sure Guardians don’t last very long, in the game or turn up on the other side of it. You’d had plans about what to do about that of course, but obviously the plan hadn’t worked too well.

Who the hell were “Demoness” and “Highblood?” If they were demons Pam had been completely wrong about hell. (“Highblood” fit the bill better, maybe. “Demoness,” didn’t really--scary, yes, “demonic” not really.) Running over some of the things she’d said, and the weird disappearing twin, you think she might be a time traveler, the way the kid was a time traveler. (None of this shit seemed weird anymore since you found a baby and a dead Connemara pony in the rubble of a meteor strike.) 

It’s late in the afternoon, almost evening when you come back from your nature walk. You find Demoness breaking up the ground in her garden. You also find her lugging water into the house and coming out of the house with a basket. “Time travel,” you say. The gardening iteration hands you a hoe made of a wedge shaped chunk of wood lashed to a pole. “Work for my dinner, huh?” You ask. 

“Yes,” Demoness says, and points you to an area that hasn’t been gone over yet. 

Yeah, you’re just not going to argue. You take the hoe and get to work. “So, time travel?” you repeat once you’ve gotten started.

“Could be Space,” Demoness says. “Fold and fold and cut like paper dolls so there are many in the same space.”

“Yeah, but it’s Time,” you say. “Right?” 

“Yes,” Demoness admits. 

“Were you--are you a Player? Am I in a session?” 

“No and no,” Demoness says. “This is after sessions, as far as I can detect.” 

You stop for a moment. “As far as you can detect?” 

“Session time doesn’t feel like universe time,” she says. “This feels like a universe, the reward universe for the session.

“Okay. So if you’re not a Player, what are you?” You ask, though you already have a suspicion.

“I set things in position, and enable the existence of the Players,” she says, her tone flat and distant.

“A Guardian,” you say. 

She makes a face. “Ancestor,” she says. “I was too far ahead, and the others too far behind to be ‘Guardians.’” 

“And your session has something to do with ours?” 

“My descendant’s session created your session. Your session introduced an over powered entity that destroyed both sessions.”

You feel a little sick at that, a punch of failure that hits you in the chest. “Is that why they aren’t here?” You ask. 

Demoness shakes her head and continues smacking her hoe into the ground and turning the soil. She doesn’t want to talk about it, you aren’t sure you want to hear about it. You copy her actions as best you can. You are not exactly a country boy, let alone a Neolithic country boy. 

“The session was corrupted,” she says after a while. “It took multiple sessions and scratches to destroy the corrupting influence. They have not yet come through the door into this universe. They’ll be here soon.” 

“Is that Jesus’ Second Coming soon or actual objective soon?” you ask. 

Demoness blinks at you. “I have no idea what that means.” 

“Are you taking it on faith they’ll be here or do you have verifiable objective proof they’ll be here?” You ask. 

“I am taking it on faith I am not being lied to,” she says after a long silence. “I am told that this is a successful universe produced by a session free of the corrupting influence.” She gives the ground a few more whacks with her hoe. “I have some doubt, since I’m here,” she mutters. 

“You’re the corrupting influence?” You ask. 

She hums, and doesn’t answer your question. You’re pretty sure she won’t answer the other question-- who gave her the information--either. You both continue working hoeing the garden, and have it mostly done by afternoon. Demoness shows you where to put the hoes when you’re done, and you both wash up by the well before going inside. “Highblood” is sitting on the ground chopping sprouted tubers into chunks, and then putting them in baskets. “Fucking rodents got in the seeds, Demoness,” he says. 

“How much damage?” Demoness asks. 

“Two baskets fucked up and full of skitterbeat shit,” Highblood says. “Little shits made pretty good snacks though.” 

You get volunteered to help Highblood with chopping up the seed tubers. You are not exactly happy about this, remembering the night before. Highblood seems disinclined to try grabbing you again, but you try to stay out of reach anyway. 

“You got a name, motherfucker?” Highblood asks after a few minutes. 

“Dirk Strider,” you say after a pause. 

“Where all did you get to?” he asks. 

You tell him about exploring the immediate area around the house. He asks questions about your species, about your planet. You ask him questions about their session, but it turns out he doesn’t know very much. He died long before the Game even started. He didn’t even know there was such a thing or about his role as a Guardian. (Or Ancestor in his case.) What he does know, he’s mostly heard from Demoness, who it turns out is something of a mythic figure. (She was the Handmaiden of Death, apparently. Highblood says it really quiet, like he really, really doesn’t want Demoness to hear the word.)

He tells you about waking up in the forest and being confused as hell. (And apparently believing he was in his religion’s version of hell.) He’d run into the Demoness and they’d fought on and off for a few weeks until they’d ended up calling a truce. The truce had developed from there into some kind of relationship, the details of which you’re not really equipped to understand. He asks you questions about the Game, and it becomes pretty clear he’s fact checking, seeing if whatever Demoness had said was accurate.

“Highblood’s” actual name is apparently Kurloz Makara. Demoness does not appear to have a name besides “Demoness” and the verboten “Handmaid.” They call themselves “trolls” and it pretty much fits as far as you can tell. 

Demoness makes dinner, occasionally assisted by other iterations. A few occasionally come over to annoy Highblood before heading back out. This is weird, and kind of creepy. The three of you eat dinner, and you end up continuing to help with setting up baskets of seeds for planting tomorrow. Eventually you’re too sleepy to do much of anything so you wobble off to the bedroom. (Where, despite being sleepy as fuck, it takes you a while to get to sleep.)

Your dreams that night are weird and involve the hellscape world the kid ended up on after entering the Medium. You are trying to find the kid for some reason, but all you can find are bodies. Bodies with every bone broke, eviscerated, impaled and broiled. Piles of towheaded infants, like a reenactment of every dead baby joke ever, toddler corpses, eight, nine, ten year old corpses. Little starved bodies curled in niches, their sunken eyes staring at you accusingly. You’re growing more and more frantic, trying to find a kid that’s still alive, but all you can find are corpses. 

You face off at the end on the roof of the apartment with some spiny black armored horror twice your size with blazing red eyes and curved sickle claws. The hand gripping your sword is shaking, and the horror moves fast and hits hard. It knocks your sword out of your hand with contemptuous ease and knocks you on your back. It opens you up, sickles slicing into you like you’re a goddamn cake, and it shows you your heart. You wake up swimming in sweat, your pulse hammering away in your ears. 

The next few days are pretty much the same. You get pressed into working for room and board, you wander around when you get the chance, and when you sleep, you have weird as fuck dreams. You are not the only one having nightmares, either. Demoness wakes up convinced she can’t breathe, choking on fucking air and her own screams. When that happens, Highblood pulls her into his lap and tells you to get the fuck out, which you do. Highblood fucking talks in his sleep saying all kinds of weird creepy shit, or flails around like he’s fighting something--and Demoness tells you to get the fuck out and she deals with her boyfriend. 

The boyfriend is weird as fuck (which as a judgment coming from you should be something). He is some kind of racist asshole and he and Demoness spend a lot of time bitching and arguing about shit that goes right over your head. (Your general tactic is to abscond until the old marrieds settle the fuck down.) Some nights he doesn’t come out of his pile, just lies there, obviously wide awake but otherwise a gargantuan lump. He mumbles creepy shit Demoness says is the scriptures of his religion. When Demoness gets tired of it, she hauls Highblood out of bed and bitches at him until he eats and cleans himself up. 

What they are is _moirails,_ some weird as fuck alien relationship that you don’t quite get. They don’t fuck, as far as you can see, just argue like an old married couple or curl up together on each other’s piles. “She’s a nasty, spooky little bitch I never would have expected to fall pale for,” Highblood says after one such bitch session. “But I’m pale as bone and sand for her.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Demoness says. She doesn’t look up from where she’s repairing one of her skirts. 

“That there means ‘I’m pale like seafoam and salt,’ in nasty rusty witch,” Highblood says. 

“And that gesture she just made is agreement, right?” you ask. “How did you make any of these clothes with stitches like that?” 

She shoves the repair job into your lap. “Show me how then,” she snaps. 

“Well, okay, I’ve never worked with a bone needle or gut,” you say, fishing the needle and the long thin gut strand out of the folds of the skirt. The strand is just thick enough that you can pick it of the holes with no problem. With that done, you start over with neat, even stitches. “And that doesn’t answer the question.” 

“I figure out how, and teach myself,” she says. 

“Right. Time traveler.” 

You end up helping with the sewing a lot after that, which you have no problem with. 

(You do however have a problem with having to wear a fucking skirt. You definitely need to rectify this situation.)


	3. Ayla Invents Everything

Demoness does most of the work around her house by dint of there being potentially multiple iterations of her at any one time. There’s one that seems to be in charge of most of the tool making and building. She usually shows up to teach the “main” Demoness how to do something, or to repair something else. There’s another one that’s in charge of finding edible or otherwise useful plants. She helps with planting and weeding, and gets into arguments about pigments with Highblood. 

(Thing you have learned: Trolls use blood in their paints because troll blood is apparently colorfast. Highblood wants to paint. Demoness does not want blood on her walls. The arguments about this are hilarious and also gross.)

There’s a Demoness that’s apparently in charge of weather patterns and keeping track of the seasons. She is working on a calendar and some kind of astrology project. This results in more arguments with Highblood. “It is not your place to be numbering the stars in the heavens,” Highblood grumbles at her when she shows up a few hours after midnight with rolls of parchment. (Probably made by another iteration who hasn’t shown up yet.) “Your days are too short for such considerations.” He’s studying the unrolled parchment, which is full of calculations and symbols you can’t read. 

“My days are infinity plus one,” astrology Demoness says. She moves to snatch the parchment back, but Highblood holds it out of reach. “I don’t see you dividing the heavens.” 

“I’d not put my unskilled hands to such work,” Highblood says. “It’d be unfunny if I fucked up the calculations to or from the saints’ holy days.” 

“If you won’t, I might as well,” astrology Demoness says, and this time she succeeds in rescuing her parchment. “No saints days though; just equinoxes, solstices and phases of the moon.” 

“Not much to record of that, just one, barely big enough to see by at night and the color of piss besides,” Highblood says. 

“It’s only a little smaller than the big pink moon,” main Demoness says. “But closer and just as bright. Does your eyesight falter, Highblood?” The last is said in a tone of sweet, 100% fake concern.

“My vision’s fine, sassiest sister,” Highblood says.

They continue with the arguing like an old married couple (or however many since there’s currently three of them, but two of them are the same person). A few hours before dawn, the three of them retreat for the bedroom and their piles. You stay out of it. Your voyeur tendencies are not piqued by hair braiding, nonsexual heavy petting and long, detailed conversations about feelings and horrible things.

(The horrible things conversations could get loud and pretty disturbing. You generally absconded when they started that up. Gory psychological horror was one thing, the real deal was another. You are apparently rooming with Actual Freddy Krueger and Actual Sadako. Aside from your first encounter with Highblood, they have been more or less chill, if also creepy as fuck sometimes.)

You scrub the dishes and set them to air dry. Another Demoness turns up as you’re dumping the dishwater. “There’s a feelings jam in the back room, if you want to get a piece of tall dark and scary’s action,” you tell her. 

She tilts her head in a way that indicates a negative. “Checking on you,” she says. She looks to the wooden basin in your hands. “More domestic than I expected.” 

“You expected something?” you ask. “How do you know anything about me?” 

She laughs at you. “How do you think?” she asks. 

“From the future maybe?” you suggest, heading back for the house. She follows you. 

She laughs again. “Good guess, but no. We had the same master, he would not approve of a bad ass male doing girly shit like cleaning.” 

You stop and turn to stare at her. “What the fuck do you mean ‘master’?” you ask. Your voice is trying for harsh, but it sounds more strangled in your hearing. “I mean if that’s the way you roll, I could give it a try.” 

She tugs the basin out of your hands. You almost try to clutch at it, but your hands feel nerveless. You feel sick, and you don’t know why. “He did the same to Highblood,” she continues. “No need, he had me to work his will. He had Her Imperious Condescension, but he wanted to fuck around with the clown too; the big powerful and _artistic_ bad ass Highblood.” She smiles at you, all teeth. “He fucked around with you too. What do you think was in that empty place in your head?” She doesn’t bother to wait for your response; she just heads into the house with the basin.

“What the fuck,” is all you can get out when you follow her into the house. “What the fuck.” Also how the fuck did she know? You can’t imagine telling anyone. Striders are not big with the crazy sounding confessions of having an empty goddamn head. 

“When you woke up, you felt empty,” Demoness says. “Yes?” She set the basin to dry by the dishes, and sits down at the table. 

“I don’t fucking know what you’re talking about,” you say. You aren’t tracking, you feel disconnected and strange. “Lil Cal’s awesome.” Your words are at once reflex, and also childish as fuck. You make as if to leave despite the shitty one liner.

“Sit down,” she says. 

You think, _don’t tell me what to do, bitch,_ and something yanks you down to sit at the table. You try to get back up, but you can’t move. Red flickers all around you. _Lil Cal’s awesome,_ your own voice, subtracting a couple decades, chants in the back of your head somewhere. _Lil Cal’s awesome. Lil Cal’s awesome._

“I do not want you breaking your head to be a constant,” she says. She puffs out a sigh. “At least you’re not out of your mind sick and seeing shit.”

“I’m certainly hearing shit,” you say, voice low and angry. “What the fuck are you talking about?” You bite your tongue before another automatic _“Lil Cal’s awesome,”_ comes out. _Lil Cal’s awesome, Lil Cal’s awesome, LilCalsawesome._

“Three weeks ago, you drink bad water, and you get sick, and then you get hurt and more sick. We find you two weeks ago, still sick. We take care of you for about a week, then today you wander off in a dream and break your fucking head,” she says. Then in a weirdly fond voice, “It took you months before you got better. You are a fucking wreck.” 

“That didn’t happen though,” you say. “What do you mean break my head?” You ask, distracted. You remember her saying that. 

“Not like a melon, just a crack,” she says. “But pretty bad. What we are is very sturdy. You’d still be alive even if your head had broken like a smashed melon.” She smiles at you, all teeth. “But maybe a little more stupid.”

“What do you mean, ‘what we are’?” You ask, now completely distracted from the inward chant of _Lil Cal’s awesome._ There’s also the part where it sounds like she’s juggling at least two timelines, maybe more. 

“Whatever is like a god, that comes before gods, but which are not exactly gods,” Demoness says. 

“Like a Titan?” you ask. 

“If that’s what that is,” Demoness says. 

The conversation shifts, after that. You go along with it, and the chant of _Lil Cal’s awesome_ fades off since she isn’t casting doubt on the inherent awesomeness of Lil Cal. It’s weird, and you know it’s weird and the weirdness doesn’t stop. The accusation and your reaction to it, that is. How could your puppet be the demon that wrecked the sessions? You were attached to him, sure, and had invested him with a personality and his own subjective existence--but he wasn’t a goddamn demon.

(Pam had never liked the puppet. She wasn’t a boys don’t play with dolls type. One of her other kids had a stuffed Spiderman doll he carried everywhere and wouldn’t be parted from. She purely hated Lil Cal though, and had done everything she could to separate them. She’d stopped eventually, though you don’t know exactly why.) 

You do indicate a certain curiosity about how the hell she knew about the empty place in your head. “You said so, while you were sick,” she says. 

“And you believed crazy things said by someone out of their mind, why?” 

She smiles. “Because we have the same empty place, moron,” she says gently. She gets up, and crosses over to you, bends down and kisses you on the forehead, her hand on the back of your neck. “He was already there, and I always fucking know,” she whispers in your ear. Then she leaves, and the red still shimmering around you vanishes. 

You slump forward, arms resting on the table, and your head pressed against your forearms. Shivers run up and down your spine. The sick feeling in the pit of your stomach is back, and a sourness at the back of your throat. You can still feel her lips on your forehead, her hand curling around the back of your neck. “Jesus fuck.” 

_We had the same master._

_He fucked around with you too_

_He was already there, and I always fucking know._

_Lil Cal is awesome. Lil Cal is awesome. Lil Cal is awesome._

The words spin around and around in your head, not making a whole hell of a lot of sense. You hadn’t. You hadn’t been some kind of fucking sleeper agent, fucking up the game. (Lil Cal is awesome.) A sleeper agent wouldn’t have done their best to make sure their kid survived the game, right? You didn’t fuck things up. (Lil Cal is awesome.) Whatever created that fucked up dog monster fucked things up. You cut a fucking meteor in half. You made sure your kid got into the game in one piece. You did what you were supposed to do. You did what you had to do. 

_He fucked around with you too._

The horror is staring at you with burning red eyes. It’s black and spiny, armored liked some sort of beetle, looming over your body. It cuts off your arms, your legs, tossing them carelessly aside. A sickle cuts through your sternum, and black claws crack your ribs apart. You don’t feel anything but a sick sort of horror as it takes out your heart and shows it to you before eating it. 

Someone touches your shoulder and you scream and flail like a goddamn little girl. You pitch backward from the table, disoriented and confused, then instantly more alert. Highblood draws back, looking amused.“Heard you snuffling and whimpering out here,” he says. “All having a day terror.” 

“I don’t fucking whimper,” you say. 

“Must be some other hornless motherfucker then, throwing his voice maybe,” Highblood says, and sits down at the table. “Better clean that puddle,” he says. 

You start to say, _I didn’t fucking piss myself either,_ but you realize puddle he’s referring to is on the table. You fucking drooled in your sleep. Goddammit. You swipe the table clean with your arm, and dry off using some of the sand on the floor. 

“Think we all oughtta look for that other motherfucker, slandering your hardass self?” Highblood asks, sounding amused. 

“I thought the moirail thing was exclusive to Demoness,” you mutter.

“You think I’m coming over pale for you?” Highblood asks. “It’s nothing to do with pale. A motherfucker can’t help but to hear the day terrors you keep having.” 

“I’m not the only one having nightmares,” you say. “Don’t tell me about splinters when you fucking have a log sticking out of your eye.” You are for some reason rocking some pretty fucking Biblical metaphors. 

“I don’t remember saying I didn’t have ‘em,” Highblood says. “Just saying that yours woke me the fuck up.”

“Well I’m awake now, so you can go back to bed,” you say. 

“Nah,” Highblood says. “I’m all up now. Feeling a little guilty you never got to your pile.”

“I decided to respect the entirely metaphorical sock on the door knob,” you say.

You’re a little surprised the comment doesn’t fly completely over his head. Either trolls have an equivalent to the sock over the door to signal privacy required due to sex, or he figured it out on his own. 

“Still could have grabbed some bedding,” Highblood says. “Know you well enough now, we wouldn’t care if you came in and grabbed a fur or something.”

“Scandalous displays of completely chaste PDA, I couldn’t bear to witness such completely vanilla fluff,” you say dryly. 

“I feel sorry for a hornless motherfucker who hasn’t ever got his pale on proper,” Highblood says with a sigh of dismay for your tragically limited romantic palette. “No jamming, no conciliations or fierce mediation.” 

“Striders don’t really do emotions,” you say. 

Highblood snorts. “You go and tell yourself that, motherfucker,” he says. “You’ll figure out how hard you ain’t sooner or later.”

You decide you’re not going to rise to the bait. “Whatever, I’m heading to bed,” you say. “Morning.” You get up and head for the bedroom. 


	4. Subjective Reality vs Objective Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing the new friend!

You can’t quite settle after the talk you had with that particular Demoness. (Or the dream for that matter, or your conversation with Highblood.) You lie down on your pile and stare up at nothing, listening to Demoness breathe. Bits of the dream you had live behind your eyes; when you close them, you can still see the spiny-armored monster looming over you. (Red eyes above you and a shining sickle cutting you open. Black armored hands reaching deep inside you.) You can’t sleep, and your thoughts are going around in circles. _Because we have the same empty place, moron._

Lil Cal possesses a subjective reality. You don’t remember a time when you didn’t have him. There hasn’t been a time when he wasn’t there to keep you company. Lil Cal’s personality is something you created. You know his likes and dislikes. You’ve had long conversations about all kind of shit with him. He is your visible invisible friend, and you have never been alone or lonely, because he has always been there. But his reality is only subjective. The objective reality is that a) Lil Cal is a puppet you’ve had since you were an infant. b) You have been playing an elaborate game of make believe since early childhood.

“Lil Cal sure as hell ain’t my ‘master’,” you whisper at the darkness above your head. 

_“We had the same master,”_ the memory of the Demoness’ voice says back.

The Demoness’ “master” was some kind of game breaking demon. She had been used to create the circumstances of the demon’s creation. (This also happened to be the circumstances that created the circumstances that led to your player’s session.) There had been others who had been under the Demon’s direct control. You can’t really imagine your own personal Drop Dead Fred as what, Darth Vader? Sauron? Who the fuck even knows. 

The “demon” was in your session, fucking things up, and apparently, having already fucked things up. The demon was in her session, fucking things up and having already fucked things up. (Demoness doesn’t have all of the details. Mostly things about her session, and where your session and hers intersect, things that seem more and more alarming, the more you think about it.) Lil Cal couldn’t be the demon, and couldn’t be your “master,” (the son of a bitch hasn’t been born yet, to quote an old cowpoke) he was a fucking puppet. 

There is an empty space in your head. There is no one to mentally poke at. You ask a silent question and you don’t get an answer. The closest thing you got to a response was the weird, reflexive, “Lil Cal is awesome,” that had filled your head at the thought that Lil Cal might not be on the up and up. That he might be what fucked the game up. (That you might be what fucked the game up.) 

You think about your kid. You think about getting him ready for the game. The game you knew was coming, the game you were waiting for. The kid needed to learn how to survive on his own. The kid needed to learn how to fight. You had to toughen him up, get him ready for the game so he could win. 

(So he could be a hero.)

If the demon was using you to fuck things up, wouldn’t you have fucked your kid up? You think about your kid. You think about getting him ready for the game. The kid had needed to learn how to survive on his own. The kid needed to learn how to fight. You had to toughen him up, get him ready for the game so he could win.

(So he could be ~~an alpha male~~ a hero.) 

Sleep sneaks up on you, and the internal argument continues mostly as a flickering series of uneasy dreams. Memories of previous foster homes mix with DJing, and Pam teaching you how to sew. Turns into you laughing as you sketch out the designs for your first smuppet, imagining Pam’s scandalized reaction if she knew what purpose you were turning her lessons to. This turns into you standing on the roof of the apartment watching a green-black wall of clouds approach over the endless waves. Seagulls hover in the blasting wind, their screams filling your ears.

Then you’re arguing, over the sound of a baby crying. The baby’s in the crib, you’re trying to sew. “Failure to thrive is a thing you know,” a voice from beside the crib says.

“I fed him and changed his diaper. He’s a Player, they can’t not survive,” you say. 

“Well you certainly proved that,” the other person, who is also you, says sarcastically. “Christ on a crutch.” The sound of crying shifts position. 

You turn and see yourself picking the baby up, awkwardly patting his back in an attempt to soothe. “Put him back,” you say. “He has to learn to stop crying on his own.”

“Fuck that,” the other you says. He’s younger, hair in green and blue spikes. (Very retro punk, Pam had not been impressed.) He’s fucking cuddling the baby, and this annoys the fuck out of you. “It’s okay kiddo,” he says. “Big bro’s got you. Please don’t be coming down with something; that would suck ass.” 

“He’s not coming down with anything.”

“Except failure to thrive because Big Bro’s a fucking sociopath,” younger you croons to the baby. Little bro is settling down, though he’s still sniffling.

“Oh fuck you. We need to get him ready for the game. Do you want him to die? Lil Cal says we got to get him used to being on his own.” 

“He’s not even one yet,” younger you says. “Do you want him to end up like a kid who was raised in a fucking closet, and never even learned how to talk?” 

“That can’t happen, he’s a Player.” 

“Do you want to find out it can?” Younger you asks. “There’s got to be more than one way to fuck the game up. Why not a Player who can’t use a fucking computer because he never developed the right parts of his goddamn brain?”

“That can’t happen. He’s here, he’s a Player. The absolute minimum of socialization and language development is really, really low. If we left him alone with nothing but a computer, potable water, ramen noodles and a stack of Game Bro magazines, he’d teach himself English and be making friends with the other Players.”

“Yeah, but did it occur to you that maybe the absolute minimum is too low?” younger you asks. 

“He needs to be strong. Lil Cal says things get fucked up if he’s too weak for the game. He has to be an alpha male; we need to make him a hero.” 

When you wake up, Highblood’s not around. Demoness is making breakfast, the paste thing with slivers of smoked fish in it. “Evening,” she says, and sits down to eat. 

“What’s on the agenda for today?” you ask, making yourself a bowl. 

“Not much,” Demoness says. “Garden’s cleared and planted, store room’s clean, maybe just go flying.” 

You both eat mostly in silence after that. You want to ask her what she knows about you. Why she took you in. The words don’t want to put themselves into order though, so you keep your mouth shut. After the both of you eat, she washes dishes and you head outside. 

It’s just after sunset, and the moon hasn’t risen yet. The spring evening is full of the sounds of insects and amphibians. It’s pretty cold, and it feels like it’s going to get a little colder. You listen to wind in the leaves, and watch the stars get brighter. You can pick out the North Star, and your eyes try and fail to pick out constellations that aren’t actually there because this isn’t Earth. 

Demoness comes back from dumping the dishwater, steps up beside you. “Pretty night,” she says. You nod. 

“Want to come with?” she asks you. 

“You’re the one with telekinesis, hon,” you say immediately. “Not all of us are so gifted.”

“Afraid I might drop you, if I carried you?” she asks with a thin little smile that shows her fangs.

“Nah,” you say. “Go ahead, babe, sweep me off my feet.”

You half expect to end up in a bridal carry, but she never touches you. Instead, you both drift upward, surrounded by faint flickers of dark red. You get the pit of the stomach “elevator feeling” as you ascend above the trees and into the sky. 

Demoness gives you a challenging look. “We can go faster,” she suggests. 

The look sends all kinds of chills through you. You swallow. No way in hell you’re going to back down from that look. “Sure.” 

“Faster,” is maybe fifty, sixty miles an hour. You are flying through the sky in a way that makes you want to hold your arms out like a goddamn airplane. She dives a couple times, spins you both around. She’s laughing, and your face in hurting because you’re smiling so hard, your heart pounding in your ears. This is one hell of a roller coaster ride, and you tell Demoness as much. Then you have to explain what a “roller coaster” is. 

You’re up there for a few hours, watching the moon rise and the stars shine, then she lets you both down. You stumble a little when you get back into contact with the ground. It feels like you’re still moving, even though you’re just standing. Demoness laughs at you. “Fun?” she asks you. You nod. “Yeah.” 

“You have a big smile,” she says. 

“My stoic rep’s fucked all to hell,” you say, and try to get it under control. You feel a weird little twitch of apprehension that she might say that you have a nice smile, or worse, you should smile more often, but she doesn’t. 

“I will tell no one,” Demoness says. “Not even stupid highblood.” 

“Thanks for that,” you say. “Where is he, anyway?”

“Wanted to do devotions,” she says, and grins wickedly. “Didn’t want to do it around my scoffing heathen ass.” 

“I think I might find it hard to take too, so I’m chill with that.” 

The night’s quiet. You help her make dinner, and you both eat. Your head is full of questions you don’t know how to ask. “I’m kind of curious about some things,” you tell her midway through the meal. It was the best you could come up with, after dozens of rephrases.

“What about?” she asks. 

“I have no idea where to begin,” you say. “You seem to know a lot of what’s going on, and I’m kind of curious about what you’re up to.” 

“I know some,” she says. “Don’t have to be up to anything.” 

You aren’t sure you believe that. “Another Demoness said some things to me last night,” you say. “She said I was under the influence of your ‘master,’ basically.” 

“That bother you?” Demoness asks. 

“If I thought it was possible, yeah, it would.” 

“How do you know it’s not?” Demoness asks.

“Well, for one, Lil Cal’s a puppet,” you say. “Everything about him is something I made up.” 

“How do you know I’m talking about the puppet?” Demoness asks. 

“Lil Cal’s awesome,” you say automatically. “Fuck,” you say a few seconds later. The other Demoness never out and out said a word about Lil Cal. Just that you had an empty space in your head. Just that you were being influenced by her master. She never said anything about Lil Cal being her master. “What the fuck.” 

She smiles at you, all teeth. “Some part of you knows. I want to talk to that other part.” She reaches out and pats your cheek. “Maybe he’s not as dumb.” 

You push her hand away. “Knows what?” 

“It’s a calling card? A juju. He can see people through it, maybe influence them. The puppet shows up in both troll and human sessions.” 

“And he influenced me, at least according to you.” 

“And you,” Demoness says with a grin. “A much less stupid part.”

“I have no idea of what to think about that,” you say. You feel sick, and also tired. In the back of your head, you can hear, _Lil Cal’s awesome. Lil Cal’s awesome. Lil Cal’s awesome._ “I don’t--he’s a puppet.” You had been playing the longest game of make-believe, but who was getting played?

She pats your cheek again, and again, you push her hand away. She laughs at you. “I almost feel pale, from the look on your face.” She laughs again when you immediately take a breath and still your expression. 

“Wouldn’t you be two timing then?” you ask. 

“I said almost,” she says. “You’re cute, and maybe I’d pacify you if you were being a fucking moron, but Highblood can pacify me, and is even more of a fucking mess. The fucking clown is marinated in stupid fucking bullshit, and I’m gonna pull him out and scrub him clean.” 

“That sure sounds romantic,” you say. “Where I come from wanting to go and change someone is a pretty good sign you never loved them for who they are.” This line is mostly said for purely ironic reasons.

Demoness takes it straight though. “You pity someone pale, you want to make them not angry, not hurting themselves, however they’re doing that. You want to help them not fuck up however they’re fucking up, or how life is fucking them up. And they do the same for you, or they should. So yeah, that’s fucking changing them, but they’re changing you too, so I don’t see how that’s bad, if you don’t manage to fuck that up somehow.” 

A response that detailed needs an answer that is not _“eh, I’m fucking with you.”_ Mostly because you suspect if you said that, Demoness would punch you in the face. “Okay, the acknowledgement that abuse happens makes me think your approach to romance takes real world bullshit into account. Still don’t see how cuddling and talking about your problems is romantic though.”

“Maybe humans don’t have pity, or maybe you’re too hard to feel anything as soft as pity,” Demoness says, looking amused.

You are uncomfortably reminded of Highblood’s comments earlier. You divert the conversation to other things, and she lets you. She talks about the kiln she wants to build. There isn’t a lot you can help her with. The few times you’ve worked with clay, it was Sculpey. You both eventually go to bed. 

Highblood doesn’t turn up the next evening. He doesn’t turn up later in the evening. Demoness gets increasingly worried, and some of the worry rubs off. “Do his ‘devotions’ take this long, usually?” you ask her. 

Demoness frowns. “Some of them do,” she says. “Weeks, sometimes.” She sounds skeptical that he’d be gone so long though. “If he doesn’t show up tomorrow, I’ll go look for him,” she says. 

About an hour later, another Demoness rushes into the house. She’s out of breath, and her eyes are tinging orange, which you’re sure is a bad sign. “It’s Disciple,” she says, which startles “your” Demoness, who goes for her wands. The other Demoness rattles off what sounds like a serious of coordinates. She also shoves a bundle into your arms. “Here, take this.” 

“It’s dangerous to go alone,” you mutter immediately, and unwrap what turns out to be a flat squared off club edged with sharp flint points. This thing is not brand sparkling new. It’s been used, and you kind of have an idea of how. It’s a sword, kind of, as much as a club. 

“Go!” The other Demoness says, and somehow both you and Demoness are rushing out the door. You start out running, but then you’re both flying, jinking tightly between the trees. “Who the hell is Disciple?” you ask. 

“Someone who has reason to avenge herself,” Demoness says. “On Highblood. Maybe me. Can’t let either of them get killed.” 

You hear the fighting, before you see it. There’s lots of shouting and crashing around. Your ears buzz, not quite understanding all of what they’re yelling at each other. Highblood’s mocking her, a tall troll with blunted triangle horns dressed in some huge cat skin and not much else. _This is all being what your… means to you…?_ Not as tall as Highblood is, maybe a little taller than Demoness.

She’s screaming something back, calling him a butcher and a murderer. They are both pretty clawed up. Catskin’s blood is a weird dark green. Catskin lunges for Highblood’s throat, climbing him like a tree. Highblood bellows, and tries to peel her off. It doesn’t go so well, they both go crashing to the ground. Demoness hauls them apart and knocks them away from each other. “You, Disciple,” she snaps, and rushes over to her boyfriend. 

You flashstep over to Catskin, who has already rolled to her feet. She’s brought up short by your appearance. “Stand aside,” she growls at you. Her eyes are bright red and dark green. 

“Yeah, no,” you say. Interestingly enough, instead of knocking you flat, she tries to go around you. You are much faster than her, and whack her with the flat side of the club-sword thing. She punches at you, which you block, again with the flat side. 

Behind you, you can hear some crashing around, and Highblood demanding Demoness let him at the dirtblood heretic bitch. You don’t hear what she says in reply, but the direction of Highblood’s ranting ascends into the air. 

Catskin screeches bloody murder, and manages to knock you off your feet, lunging at the retreating Demoness. The club-sword goes flying. Then of course, she whirls on you. “Why?” she screams. “Why protect him? Why serve that monster?” 

You scramble to your feet and manage to re-arm yourself. “What the fuck are you on?” you ask. “I don’t _serve_ anyone.”

“Why did you help him get away?” She asks, stalking toward you. She’s threatening, but you also get the feeling she doesn’t want to hurt you. (But she might if she thinks she has to.)

“I don’t think he got away, so much as got dragged off the playground screaming,” you say. “Leaving me with the crazy catgirl, thanks Demoness.”

Catskin’s eyes have cooled down from red to orange. She is still looking mightily pissed. “Demoness.”

“Uh yeah, I think you’d call her the Handmaid of Death?” you ask. “They’re moirails.” 

She says something, and your ears buzz, not picking up what she said. A flat out denial is what you got from it, and something else. Something about monsters and another denial. 

“Yeah I’ve spent a few weeks watching them cuddle each other and talk each other down from nightmares, so fuck if I know what else to call it,” you say. 

“They are responsible for the deaths of millions,” Catskin says. “Yet you defended them.” 

“I didn’t exactly know about that, when they took me in,” you say. “Uh, I knew Highblood was a nasty horrifying creep within a minute of meeting him though.” 

“But you know now,” Catskin says. 

“Sort of. They have nightmares and shit, and Highblood’s some kind of creepy ass racist who grew up in a creepy ass cult. Demoness seems to be trying to fix that, so,” you shrug. 

“You forgive them?” Catskin asks, and her tone is a little weird.

“I don’t know what all they’ve done that needs forgiving,” you say. “I’m pretty sure that’s probably above my paygrade. They aren’t currently doing fucking horrible things and they seem pretty fucked up about said fucking horrible things and don’t have plans to do future horrible things from what I’ve seen. That’s going to have to be enough, since they’re letting me stay at their place.” 

“You feel indebted to them?”

You shrug. “Demoness, maybe. She seems pretty invested in keeping everyone alive, and I can appreciate that.” 

“If she keeps you alive, it’s only to kill you later,” Catskin growls. 

“I think that’s pretty much over,” you say. “She was being forced to do shit like that. If she’s the Handmaiden of Death, who do you think she’s serving, right?” 

“I hate him,” she says. “I hate that I hate him.” There’s a kind of buzz on the word “hate” like it means more than what you’re understanding. “I died old, and awoke young. I’ve been wandering for eights of seasons, I was happy, if lonely. Then I saw him, and all I could hear was my friends and family screaming.” 

You have no idea of what to do or say. You don’t handle other people’s feelings well. You don’t handle your own feelings well, come down to it. _Can you at least fake being sad, you little shit?_ That was the problem, you couldn’t fake being sad. Or you weren’t sad at the right things. “Demoness is probably not going to let you kill him,” you say. “But I’m also pretty sure she doesn’t want you to end up dead either.” 

Catskin snorts at this, and looks skeptical. Her sclera have faded back to yellow, there’s just a few threads of the orange left. “I’ll let you go in peace,” she says. “You’ve given me things to think on.” She turns her back, and walks away from you. 

You feel an odd sort of tension drain out of you when she leaves. You end up sitting down on a log for a while before heading back to the house. 


	5. Subbjuggulator Piled by Five Rusties In a Semi-Public Place! Sweet Pale Action!! Watch   This High Church Clown Get Papped In Front of An Alien Voyeur!!!

It takes you a while to get home. Demoness had done some fancy flying and dodging between the trees, and you hadn’t gotten a good read on directions while she was doing so. Fortunately, you’ve done enough walking around and exploring that you’re able to eventually find familiar landmarks and get home without getting too turned around. (The thought “home” hits you weird. It is not a term you expected to come up with for Demoness’ Neolithic Hobbit hole.)

It’s quiet when you approach the house, so you figure that Highblood and Demoness have argued things out and retreated to the bedroom. (You’ll be sleeping in the living area then.) You open the door and well–they haven’t gone to bed.

There’s a pile off to the left of the fire pit, in the middle of the floor. It’s made of bones and furs and rocks and Highblood is surrounded by five or so iterations of Demoness. Two are leaning on either side of him, and one’s in his lap, snuggled up against his chest as much as her horns will allow. One’s setting up tallow candles, apparently for some romantic ambience, and another is pouring something that is definitely not water from a waterskin into a leather cup.

Highblood himself is seated upright, but seems to be mostly half asleep. He’s doing some kind of scalp massage for the Demoness in his lap. They are both doing this sleepy little hum-purr duet thing.

“You going to just stand there, or come in?” the Demoness pouring the drink says. She hands the drink off to one of the other Demonesses.

“Should I? Looks like you’re all occupied.” Despite your words, you step inside the house, closing the door behind you.

“Disciple?” one of the Demonesses leaning against Highblood asks.

“Dirtblood heretic of a false–” Highblood mutters, glaring at you, for lack of anyone else to glare at. The Demoness in his lap reaches up and smacks his cheek. Her hand lingers, stroking where she smacked him.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooosh,” she says, a humming vibration that manages to somehow send shivers down your spine.

“Stop that,” Highblood mutters.

“No,” the Demoness in his lap says. “Rub my neck.” She shifts around so her back is to Highblood’s chest.

“I’mma break your neck,” Highblood says, but does what he’s told.

“Disciple?” The Demoness prompts, pouring another drink. This one she hands off to you.

“Catskin’s in one piece, and decided to leave me in peace instead of pieces,” you say, and take the cup. The contents are definitely alcoholic with notes of honey. You take a sip. It’s sweet and definitely alcoholic honey.

“Mead,” Demoness says. 

“Don’t drink it, shit’ll make you crazy,” Highblood says.

“It’s not _mind honey_ ,” Demoness says back. “Just honey.”

“Mind honey?” You ask.

Demoness explains about beehive computers, and how mindhoney was dangerously psychoactive. “Mindhoney mead could be a thing,” Demoness says thoughtfully. “But it would make your head explode.”

“That would definitely suck,” you say, and take another, longer sip of the mead. You’re about to make your excuses and call dibs on the bedroom (since they weren’t in it) when Highblood sees the toothed club you’ve been carrying.

“Where’d you get that [macuahuitl]?” Highblood asks. The word doesn’t quite translate, and you don’t know the word that you heard in its place.

“This?” You gesture with the club. “Demoness gave it to me.”

Highblood makes an impatient “come here” gesture with one hand. “Let’s see it.”

You glance a question at the nearest Demoness, who just smiles at you. The Demoness in Highblood’s lap shifts out of it and you shrug, handing him the makwah-whatever. The thing looks tiny in his huge hands as he turns it this way and that. “It meeting with your approval, big guy?” you ask.

“Some good workmanship here,” he says, apparently taking you literally. “Has a nice weight to it. Someone had time to match up the flints by color before fixing them to the club. Needs some carving on the flat.” He looks up at you, indigo-purple eyes amused. “Wiggler-small of course, and it ain’t hardly been used. You just wave it in the bitch’s face and hope?”

“Told him not to kill,” one of the Demonesses says before you can get a chance to tell him what you think of that.

“Why the fuck not?” Highblood demands.

“Like I would’ve anyway,” you say. “Sounded like she had a pretty valid reason to kick your ass.”

“You talked to that heretic bitch?” Highblood starts to say more, hand tightening on the club, but one of the Demonesses pats him sharply on the cheek, and he growls at her instead.

“Give me a reason why I shouldn’t, that’s got nothing to do with your creepy bullshit,” you say back.

Highblood snarls at that. “You think you got any right to disrespect my faith?” he says.

“I don’t give a fuck about your faith,” you tell him. “Catskin calmed down once Demoness dragged you home by your ear, and I think we got a truce.”

“A motherfucking truce?” Highblood demands. “A truce you say, all motherfucking ashen in my face when it was my moirail that was all that kept me from destroying that bitch.”

“Is that how it plays out in your skull, asshole?” you ask. “From my end Demoness threw me at Catskin to distract her long enough to rescue your purple ass.”

“Like I’d need rescue from the likes of that,” Highblood mutters. His grip loosens on the makwa-whatever, and it settles on his lap. One of the Demonesses takes it back and hands it to you. He looks more tired than angry now.

Outside the Carnival, with no ticket in my pocket I am surrounded by nonbelievers. It’s the Highblood’s voice. You aren’t sure whether you actually heard it, or if that’s just what his face looks like, and you’re subconscious is supplying a caption from some of the things Highblood has said.

“You should teach him to use the [macuahuitl],” a Demoness says to Highblood.

“And why would I be doing that?” Highblood grumbles.

“You want him to just flail around with it like a wiggler with a stick playing at being a warrior?” Demoness asks.

“Hey,” you say, offended. The Demonesses ignore you, much the way they seem to be ignoring their boyfriend’s protest.

“Give you both something to do,” another Demoness says.

“Anyway, have to close the loop,” yet another Demoness says. “Have to make one, and send it back.”

“So I have to learn to use one, _and_ how to make one?” you ask.

“Still don’t know how you think I’m the one to be doing it,” Highblood says.

The Demoness who mentioned the “loop” drapes herself over Highblood’s back, arms around his neck. She bonks her horns against the back of Highblood’s head. “We have to close the loop.”

Highblood growls at her, but it’s really more of a purr. “What happens if we don’t?”

“I’m pissed off because we have a broken loop,” she says, and bonks her horns against the back of Highblood’s head again. “Things that are made have to be made to exist.” 

Highblood sighs, extremely put upon, and asks you, “what do you usually strife with?”

“Sword,” you say.

“Size and shape, specialty?” He asks.

So you explain the katana, shitty or otherwise to him. In return, he explains the [macuiahuitl] to you, with a side trip to various other kinds of maces and clubs, with a further digression into flails. He also talks at length about what materials are needed for the creation of a good [macuiahuitl,] and training in how to use it. You make a few attempts to argue your way out of it, but Demoness asks you where you’re going to find the iron to make into steel and then the swordsmith to fold it all those fussy times and turn it into a katana.

After more talking, you abscond for the back room. You are not entire sure about what you’ve been talked into. You’re even less sure about how you got yourself included in their little pale bacchanalia. They were definitely more comfortable around you, and you couldn’t help but remember Highblood a few nights previous coming out to talk to you about your dreams. You think about Demoness taking you flying. Were they putting the moves of some variety on you? Did you actually give a fuck? You didn’t do relationships. You preferred anonymous hookups. (They were safer.)

You had to be reading them wrong.

You dream disjointed dreams featuring you and younger-you. You’re both in the middle of a black-sand desert and huge broken gear wheels made of stone. The sky is full of red tentacles whiplashing across the sky, branching off. You’re talking about something but you don’t remember what it was when you wake back up in the evening.

Training becomes a thing, three, four times a week. Highblood chops a couple of pieces of wood down into crude clubs and you beat on each other in between chores. The big troll hits hard, but you’re pretty sure he’s going at maybe a half to a quarter of his usual strength and speed. Sometimes Demoness joins in with her skinny little wands and tendency to throw every goddamn rock within a mile at the both of you.

Somewhere out in the woods is Catskin. You can feel her watching the house, watching you. It’s eerie as fuck, and you want to believe that you’re just being paranoid, but you know it’s her. You think Highblood has a similar feeling; every so often you get this sweeping chill coming off of him, and you remember him saying, _that ain’t you, that ain’t a fucking troll._ So you figure it’s some kind of radar thing he’s doing with his terror field.

Demoness doesn’t want either you or Highblood going too far out in the woods. This pisses Highblood off to no end, and he spends a lot of time bitching about it. Demoness is also not happy about it, though for reasons you don’t understand. There’s this thing called “ashen” that Demoness does not want to be, and feels she’s having to be. Highblood meanwhile doesn’t think you are worthy of his ash corner and he sure as hell ain’t pitch for a heretic and so on.

Finally, you give up and just ask Demoness about it while helping her weed the garden. “So, I know we got side-tracked into talking about clubs, and talking about training with clubs, but there was also some commentary about ‘ashen’ which since has been a frequent recurring argument between you and Highblood,” you start off. “What are we talking about here?”

She grins at you. “We are talking about clubs,” she says, and laughs at the expression you can’t help making.

“Clubs,” you say flatly.

“A three lobed club!” Demoness says. “It’s conciliatory, like moirails, but instead of cuddling one idiot, you keep two idiots from killing each other.”

“And that would be the ‘pitch’?” you ask.

Demoness tilts her head at you. “Yes, but also no,” she says. “Pitch is concupiscent hatred. It’s rivalry, not killing. Disciple and Highblood can’t be rivals, no respect, no admiration.” She makes a face. “I’m pale for Kurloz,” she says. “I don’t want to think about him ashen!”

“First names, this must be serious then,” you say. “And I guess I’m the only one available to cockblock your boyfriend and Catskin?”

“I know you don’t feel it,” she says. “You don’t _have_ to club them. But if I have to go ashen, it won’t be good.” 

You get a weird feel then. Like there’s a calculator in your head, adding things up. Highblood, Kurloz, really, really didn’t like making Demoness angry. You get the feel that Demoness could be scary as fuck if she were really and truly angry. She was pretty scary even when she wasn’t angry, but for Highblood she was also some kind of demigoddess. If Highblood were too scared of Demoness to feel “pale” for her anymore, they’d both be fucking miserable.

For a variety of reasons, you were feeling involved enough with your roommates that you didn’t think you could stand Demoness or even Highblood being miserable. Also, you were pretty sure it wouldn’t be safe to be around Demoness or Highblood if they were being miserable. “Well shit,” you say.

She gives you a questioning look.

“I should point out right here that I know fuck all about any kind of relationship, human or troll,” you say. “So I can’t guarantee I can do fuck all for them ‘ashen’ but I guess I could try?”

“Just don’t let them kill each other,” she says.

“Okay, I guess I could try doing that,” you say. “Maybe you could explain what the deal is between them? I mean, I have a pretty good idea what happened, but details would be good.”

Demoness tells you about the Signless, a mutant who preached about peace and the abolition of the hemospectrum. This was not a popular belief and went against most of the core teachings of Highblood’s religion. It was also not a popular belief with the Empress, who had Highblood put the rebellion down in his usual fashion. (The Signless and the rebellion were also absolutely necessary to ensuring the lives of the Players, which is the only reason the rebellion happened in the first place.)

The Disciple was one of the Signless’ closest followers, his friend and his lover. Seeing another troll after a couple of “sweeps” and having it be the Grand Highblood had sent her into a rage. “It’s not good for either of them,” Demoness says.

“Why is it important?” you ask. “I get the feeling you want her to stick around?”

Demoness hums an agreement, and drops more weeds into the basket. “I’ve been looking for them, for the others,” she says. “Not as much as I might, because I do what I want now, not what I’m told, but it’s important. That we come together.”

“Who is telling you what to do?” you ask.

“No one,” she says. A little while later, she says, “Ghosts.”

“Ghosts. Ghosts of who, if there’s no one around?” you ask. “And what are they telling you to do?”

“The Gods need to come into the new universe and complete the act of creation,” Demoness says. “There is a specific point they must enter. One of us is standing on that point because she’s a huge goddamn bitch so they can’t come through.” She glares at the basket of weeds as if they’d personally offended her. “I do what I want now, and what I want is no one fighting.”

“And maybe getting allies for some kind of showdown between good and evil?” You ask.

“What is good? What is evil?” Demoness asks. “This universe is half-made until the Gods come through and finish the work They began. That is what actually matters, not good or evil.” She gets up, and carries off the weeds to dry out and burn.


	6. Exercises in Attempting to Keep Two Idiots from Killing Each Other

Highblood wants no part of your ashen wiles. “Could break you in half, with a snap of my fingers,” he says when you bring it up during arts and crafts hour. He’s knapping flint and you’re sanding the wood pieces of the macuahuitl that Demoness had shaped. 

“I’m not exactly thrilled either, but apparently someone needs to cock block the pitch thing,” you say. 

“You know fuck all about pitch,” Highblood says looking up at you from his work. His eyes are weird, bright and sharp, looking right into you and seeing who the fuck knows what. He goes back to shaping his current flint. “It’s not pitch I’m feeling for a blaspheming dirt blood heretic and it’s not ashen I’m feeling for a pasty little legume like you.”

“Well, why don’t you school me?” you ask. Yeah, you’re not going to address the little bean comment. Highblood is fucking huge; you’re shy of six feet. Not getting into a pissing contest about you’re comparative heights. 

“Demoness set you on me ashen, and you don’t even know pitch?” Highblood asks. 

“Blah blah rivalry, blah blah hate sex,” you say, making mouth movements with one hand. “Catskin does apparently hate you like that and doesn’t want to. You apparently don’t hate her like that.” You point a thumb at your chest. “Therefore me, from my understanding of the ashen thing.” 

“Like fuck you,” Highblood says. “How do you know she’s pitch for me?”

“I talked to her, remember? It didn’t translate well, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she was saying. You being the first troll she saw after however long fucked her up.” 

Highblood doesn’t say anything for a while. He finishes off the point and sets it aside with the others. “It’s a powerful thing, being alone and lost for a time, and then seeing another face,” he says. “I thought my ticket had been torn when I awoke in the wilderness, and was mad with the grief and rage of it. I saw the Demoness and blamed her for it, and we spent a season fighting over it. She can bowl me over like I’m a wiggler, and her mind knows no mortal fear. You are not equal to that in the ashen quadrant.”

“Fuck you, I chopped a huge as fuck goddamn meteor in half,” you say. “While it was falling. I could take you.”

Highblood snorts, and glances up at you with a lazy sort of amusement. You feel the sweep of his personal terror field and struggle not to shiver at the weight of it. “How big was that meteor?” 

You give a one shoulder shrug. “Bigger than your ugly ass,” you say, trying for a casual tone. 

The fear is a sharp anxiety, a hyper focus on how dangerous the huge ass troll is on the other end of the table. Sharp teeth, gleaming eyes, a goddamn monster that can pull you apart, break you like a doll. He was so much bigger than you, so much stronger than you, he could do whatever he wanted, and you wouldn’t be able to stop him. He could reduce you to pulp; make you beg for death for days before actually killing you. 

The hobbit hole seems to fade out; all that exists are Highblood’s burning eyes, and the awareness of how terrified you are of him. The fear soaks right in, fills you up and spills over. It freezes you in place, and you can’t breathe. You stare at Highblood--

\--At Kurloz Makara who teetered between faith and the loss of that faith. Who had despaired and was only just now starting to live. Who had received the terrible knowledge of his false faith with a Rage that had not yet risen from the depths of his subconscious mind. Who was held by his devotion for his brothers in faith, by his devotion for the very few he pitied. Who--

\--You throw a handful of sand into his eyes and abscond like the Devil was on your tail, in a flat out run straight for the goddamn woods. You hear a roar and swearing behind you. You don’t look back because that would take away valuable absconding seconds. You run and dodge between trees, stumble through a tiny little stream, and almost fall into a not so tiny ravine. 

It takes some time to realize he’s not coming after you. You collapse on an incline full of flowers, greenery, grass and saplings, hoping like hell the greenery you’re lying on doesn’t turn out to be poison ivy or some shit. You’re surrounded by trees, and it’s pretty quiet, probably because of the racket you made absconding. 

You breathe and watch the flowers and grass move in the breeze. There’s bugs too; butterflies and grasshoppers and the occasional bee. There’s a lot to watch; little glowing sparks of life that are not actually glowing, it just seems like they are. It would be easy to reach out and touch a spark and know it the way you’d known Highblood. 

This feels like a weird thought to have; weird and way too intense to handle, suddenly, now that you’re not running. It’s too bright, too much. You curl up and think about how long the deeply rooted grass has been coming up, year after year. It dies off but keeps coming back, determined as the year before despite being cropped down, drowned, and frozen. Seeds germinated and sprouted, and what was deeply rooted grew back. This is as much as can be handled right now; grass and flowers and other greenery. The glow was there, you could still sense what was going on with it, but there wasn’t a lot going on; just the same cycle, over and over again. It was nice, comforting.

Footsteps are less comforting. You look up, and it’s too much again. Catskin, her grief and love fills her. The memories of her loved ones surround her. There’s a deepness to her, a strength and faith and continues on despite grief and defeat. There’s anger, a determination to survive and pass her faith and determination on to others. “Close your eyes,” she says. 

For whatever reason, you do that thing. 

“What were you focused on, before?” she asks. She sounds like she knows what the fuck is going on, and the part of you that went along the first order shudders in relief. The rest of you tries to find a way to tell her to fuck off, you’re fine. 

“The grass.” Saying it feels like a struggle. 

“Yeah, that’s always good. Do that now. Just the grass.” Her voice is quiet. “Tell me about the grass.” 

So you tell her how there was a forest fire a few decades back, during a dry summer followed by a bunch of lightning storms. What came back was a few struggling weeds, followed by the grass. You talk about the grass, its roots and seeds and the way it spreads. You talk about seasons and changes in the weather and changes in the soil. You talk about saplings and moles and earthworms tunneling through the dirt. The glow doesn’t fade, but it gets easier to deal with, somehow. 

You look up, and it’s not so bright anymore. Catskin is sitting a few feet away, watching you. “Hey.” Just catching some rays, absolutely no freaking out here. Catskin [Disciple, Meulin Leijon] is still this intense, layered presence, but it’s toned down. 

“How do you feel?” she asks. 

“Like my head’s been turned inside out,” you tell her. You sit up, moving slow and cautious. 

Catskin makes this humming sound. “I think that maybe, you’re like me,” she says. “And what are you like, Sheena?” you ask. 

“I can see things being alive,” she says. “Makes tracking prey so much easier.” She smiles with all of her teeth at that. They are all very, very sharp, and her jaw looks really strong. You know without knowing how, and not wanting to know at all that she’s ripped out throats with her jaws and teeth. 

“I was probably not hard to track at all, princess,” you say. “Probably left a trail a blind Girl Scout could follow.”

Catskin laughs at you. “I wasn’t threatening you by implication,” she says. “Did it sound like that?” You stare at her, and hums, sounding pleased with herself. “Not on purrpose,” she says. “I saw--flares? From the hive, one almost matched my color, and one was the same color as the highblood, and you came rushing out of the hive, so I followed you.”

“Your color?” 

Catskin cups her palms together briefly, and for a moment you see a bright pink flame in her hands. “That color!” she says. She tilts her head a bit. “You’re still pretty meowch that color.”

You look down at yourself instinctively, but you don’t seem to be bright fuchsia. Then you hear what she said. “Did you just…cat pun at me?”

She gives you a big Cheshire Cat grin. “Yes?” 

You shake your head like, okay, whatever. “Flares?” you ask. 

“It felt like something happened,” she says. “I wasn’t sure what, but it felt like what it must have felt from the outside when it first happened to me.” 

You work your way through that. “And what, you wanted to help?” 

She shrugs. “I’m not, _not_ going to help because I’m angry. It was frightening and confusing for me when it started happening to me, and if I can help, I should.” 

“Even though I’m roomies with Satan and his girlfriend?” you ask, a little skeptically. Okay, she had helped, but she had also been lurking out in the woods, greatly limiting your ability to get your roam on. 

“Should I judge you for doing what felt safest?” she asks. 

You don’t like the way she says that. You really, really don’t like the way she says that. She says it like you didn’t have a choice or something. (Like she thinks you’re some kind of victim.) It also occurs to you that if you’re seeing her, she’s seeing you; and you like that even less. (What the hell is she seeing?) “Okay so, my options were camping, which I’ve never done because I’m a city boy, and maybe dying from bad water or berries that turned out to be bird edible but not person edible or taking up Demoness on her invitation. Is there something wrong with that?” 

“Of course not,” she says. “But I notice that you ran in terror from one of your ‘roommates.’”

“He didn’t take my offer of being his ‘middle leaf’ too well,” you say. “Then I could see his soul, so I threw sand in his face and ran like hell.”

“Middle leaf?” Catskin asks with extreme puzzlement. 

“Is ashen not actually a thing?” you ask. If so it was one hell of a practical joke.

“Oh, it’s a thing, but it’s obvious you and he couldn’t be ashen for each other!” Catskin says, sounding pretty surprised at the idea. “Not the way you spar.”

“…There’s a way people who are ashen spar?” you ask. 

“If you’re the middle leaf, he should be intimidated by you, just a little!” Catskin says. “At the same time, he should be challenging your authority as the middle leaf, just enough that he can be reassured your feelings remain conciliatory. Of course it’s harder to tell with Highbloods, but still! He isn’t the tiniest bit ashen, from his body language.” 

“Yeah well, there’s no one else to do it,” you tell her. “Demoness doesn’t want to ‘flip ashen.’” 

“And the Grand Highblood doesn’t find a dirtblood worthy,” Catskin says with an ugly sneer and an undertone that sends a shiver down your spine. 

“You don’t exactly find him worthy either,” you point out. 

The undertone becomes a growl. “No. I have no respect for him.” 

“But he’s apparently a sexy beast,” you say. “I can kind of see it actually. You’d have to have one hell of a humiliation and size kink though.”

“Wouldn’t be properly pitch, that needs respect even if you’re mocking your kismesis. Wouldn’t be properly red, he’d mean it, so it wouldn’t be pity,” Catskin says. “How could he be pale?”

“I don’t know anything about quadrants,” you say. “Demoness wants to fix him, which according to her, is what ‘moirallegiance’ is about. He seems like that she isn’t scared of him and apparently likes being dominated by her.” 

Catskin snickers. “You have no idea what a perversion that should be, in his mind,” she says. 

“From what I’ve overheard it apparently doesn’t count if the ‘dirtblood’ is actually a terrifying demigoddess who can hold you down and snuggle you to death.”

“They’ve piled in front of you?” Catskin asks with a little bubble of laughter. 

“Not as such,” you tell her. “I’m guessing that’s pretty scandalous?” 

“Oh yes,” Catskin says. “Mother would blush so hard when we cuddled together, and tell us that the visiting block wasn’t the proper place for such shenanigans. Then Psii would drag her into the pile and she’d pretend to be grumpy about it for the first fifteen minutes before she started purring, and braiding my hair.” She’s smiling, but it’s kind of sad at the same time, you’re pretty sure. 

“So, you know they’re probably alive now, right?” you ask her. This is a question you don’t know how to ask politely. You sure as hell can’t do gentle. 

“Are they?” she asks, longing in a way that makes you feel pretty damn uncomfortable. “I’ve only found…him.” She makes a face. “And I suppose the Handmaiden of Death.” 

_“Demoness,”_ Demoness’ voice says from above you. You startle a bit, and look up. You just as quickly look away. She went even deeper than [Meulin] or [Kurloz] and there were things you didn’t want to see. “I am _Demoness,”_ she repeats, angrily. “Not Handmaid. Never Handmaid again.” 

“The ‘H’ word has kind of worn out,” you explain to Catskin, who looks somewhere between startled and angry. 

“I am not afraid of you, Demoness.” Catskin growls and jumps to her feet. “If my family is alive, where are they?” 

“I don’t know,” Demoness says. “The world is big, we’ll find them eventually.”

“We?” Catskin asks. “There is no ‘we’ here.” 

“There was a ‘we’,” Demoness says. “You don’t remember. It wasn’t a good ‘we’, and we fucked everything up and did it over again, and that was worse. Kankri remembers some of it.”

“How do you know that name?” Catskin asks, outraged.

Demoness smiles and it’s a pretty terrifying expression. “I saw all of it, every twist and manipulation of the Demon’s fucked up game, and I had to fucking follow every step. And now we live again and are free of the game, though there is one more thing we must do before this universe is complete.” 

Catskin looks confused and wondering, staring up at Demoness. You’re pretty sure she’s seeing some of the same things you saw. Catskin flickers fuchsia all over, a heartbeat pulse. “Oh,” she says quietly. 

“Don’t want your pity,” Demoness says, baring her teeth at Catskin.

“It continues to exist,” Catskin says. “I am still angry at what you’ve done. But I will also be angry at what was done to you. 

“Fuck. You.” 

“Pity is nothing to fear, it’s part of the social structure that binds us into communities and civilization. It does this far more kindly than the caste system which divides us and causes resentment and conflict. You saw it and you had to destroy it. Did you see the possibilities of a society based in love of all kinds? Were you envious of what was beaten out of you?” From the dreamy look in Catskin’s eyes, you are pretty sure she doesn’t really know what she’s saying. She also obviously can’t hear Demoness’ rising growl or the whining pitch of the wands you know are in the Demoness’ hands. 

You bounce to your feet and get in Catskin’s grill. “Hey, Meulin, could you fucking not?!” You shout. She startles back from you, striking out mostly blind. You catch her arm. “Can you _not_ see you’re pissing her off?” 

Catskin blinks at you in confusion. “I--?”

“Yes you,” you say. You are hyper aware you are too close to someone Demoness is very, very pissed at. You are also pretty sure she won’t shoot Catskin if you’re this close to her. “Demoness?” You get a growl in response. “Okay so Catskin has some kind of dealie where she can apparently see into your soul--”

“Heart. Meulin was Mage of Heart,” Demoness says. “I was Witch of Time.” “That’s great, really great,” you say. “Anyway, she wasn’t trying to piss you off; she just saw too much and started babbling.” 

“Babbling?” Catskin asks, sounding insulted. You don’t care. 

“So maybe don’t kill her,” you continue. “It wasn’t her fault, and really, you wanted to get everyone together so the gods can come through or whatever and you might need her later.” 

“So she is planning something,” Catskin says. 

“Gods. Coming through. One of them is my little brother,” you tell her. “Kind of important he and his friends come through and claim the prize.”

“I don’t understand anything,” Catskin says. “Let me go.” 

You let her go, and you hear Demoness land behind you.

“There is a Game,” Demoness says. “A Game that creates universes. Our Game was interfered with by a Demon that infiltrates and destroys them.” She starts explaining the Game and the five or so universe pile up your conjoined sessions consist of. 

You stay between them for the whole story, until you’re pretty sure they’ve both calmed down. Catskin is skeptical of “gods” especially gods that were actually little kids when they entered the session. She asks questions and argues a little, but politely. Demoness argues less politely. You’re kind of stuck in the middle wondering how the hell this happened. 

At the end of it, when they’ve gotten their argue out, Demoness asks you, “Are you coming back to the hive?”

“That depends, is your boyfriend going to tear me in half?” 

Demoness snorts. “No. Worried he pushed too hard, the way you ran off.

“Eleven foot troll, a number of kinks too weird even for me, no concept of personal space or safewords, kind of homicidal, I wonder why I ran off when he tried to scare the shit out of me?” A beat. “Oh sweet Jesus, why do I know his _fucking kinks?”_

Catskin makes a kind of choking noise at that. Demoness cackles. 


	7. Turning off Your Freaking Heart Light and Other Lessons

You don’t go back to the house immediately. Instead, you end up camping out with Catskin--Meulin--who gives you some pointers on controlling your powers. This takes a few days of figuring shit out and asking lots of questions. In exchange, Meulin asks you lots of questions. Things like what you remember of the game, things about your world. 

She asks you questions about your kid, because the only person she’s ever known who was raised by a member of his own species was her boyfriend. (Meulin was apparently raised by a giant cat with two mouths that was killed in a fight with a larger rogue lusus.) She decides that you were a “difficult” lusus, which feels vaguely insulting. 

“I had to make sure he was strong enough for the game,” you say during one of your discussions. “He had to be able to survive the game and take care of himself.”

“So you’ve said,” Meulin says, giving you a skeptical look. “And I’m sure lusii who wander off for long lengths of time would say the same, if they could talk.” 

“Oh come on, are you seriously telling me your catmom was a better parent? Lusus, whatever. I left notes and shit. I could leave notes and shit because-- wait for it--I wasn’t a goddamn giant apex predator that would have needed a huge-ass territory to hunt in.” Okay, the messages had mostly been puzzles and you had been a little worried sometimes that he wasn’t all that great at solving them, or detecting them. Most clear directions had been for training on the roof.

“I always had an idea of how long she’d be gone, usually about a day. If she was going to be far from the hive for longer she’d take me with her on hunting trips.” 

“Yeah, how’d those go, with a little kid around?” You ask skeptically.

“She’d make temporary dens, and I’d help her,” Meulin says with a grin. “The point is I always knew what was going on, and from what you’ve said, your charge never really did.” 

“It got him through the game though,” you say, even though there’s something at the back of your head shifting around. It’s adding shit up, what she’s saying, what you remember. It has opinions, and you don’t know what to do about them. “That’s got to be worth something.” 

“Maybe,” Meulin says, and you both go on to talk about other shit. 

Your sleep is still fucked up; and you are still up to your ears in goddamn dead baby joke punchlines. The corpses don’t stink or rot but you can’t stand it, so you start dropping them into the rivers of lava, where they melt like wax. There’s still more bodies to go, infants, toddlers, skinny little tweens. Piles and piles of your kid slashed, crushed, boiled, burned. There isn’t a live kid among them, and the gut punch of that knowledge hollows you the fuck out, even though part of you still knows that the kid is alive. That the kid won the game.

Younger you turns up, because of course he does. “So by ‘difficult’ I hope you realize she means ‘kid would be better off living with friends or quadrants and their possibly hostile lusii than with their own lusus,’” he says. 

“No, I was too busy listening to ‘my mom the giant cat monster was the best parent ever. I was a feral child but she was the best.’” you tell him. “What do you want from me, and what should I call you, the Punk from Christmas Past?”

“Do I get to call you Mr. Magoo?” Punk You asks. 

Did that even sequit? Hell yeah, it did. _Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,_ 1962.“Do I need glasses?” 

“I don’t know, you tell me, you’re the one who can’t find one living kid at the bottom of a pile of dead ones,” Punk You says. 

“What’s that?” You ask. “Some combination of a dead baby joke and pony somewhere under a pile of shit joke?” 

“No, seriously. You talk a good game, him being alive, but where is he?” Punk spreads his hands, indicating the piles of dead little brothers. “In an entirely allegorical sense, why the fuck is he dead?” 

“Because he died,” you say, and it’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said. “He died a fucking lot. I was supposed to make him stronger than this. He was supposed to be the alpha male.”

“Consider the possibility we, meaning you, because you’re a dumbass and I’m not, fucked that up real nice, because we’re _The Manchurian Candidate_ , it’s us,” Punk You says. 

“Us? I’m not sure I can deal with this Three Faces of Eve Rabbit Howling Sybil stuff,” you say. “There’s just me in here.” 

“Yeah, now,” Punk You says. “Aaaand, whatever the fuck that is at eight o’ clock. Goddamn it looks like those crab things from _The Dark Crystal_.”

“I wish it was anything as cool as that,” you say, and turn with a sigh to face the red eyed thing. 

It takes you apart again, and you wake up in a cold sweat in the early pre- dawn. You could swear you could still see unblinking red eyes above you, still see the curved edge of a sickle sliding into you. Shuddering, you curl up tighter on your fur pallet and try to fight of the nausea through willpower alone. 

You’re vaguely aware that Meulin is also awake, and building up the fire. She doesn’t say a word to you, at first, just brews some weird dried plant concoction and hands you a cup carved from horn. She makes some tea for herself before saying, “you don’t have a moirail?”

“That’s not how it works for humans,” you tell her. 

She gives you a one shoulder shrug. “If you need to talk, I can listen,” she says. “We all learned how to do that, even Psii though he was terrible at it, when Signless began to preach.” 

“Are you offering me some kind of religious counseling?” you ask, almost smiling. 

“Not exactly,” Meulin says. “We weren’t exactly religious!” 

“Or maybe I’m just that pitiful, and you wanted to know if I was taken,” you say. 

Meulin snorts. “No, not that either,” she says, amused. 

You take a sip from the cup and go, “so what actual level of technology were you guys at? Because you make shit from horn and bone and Highblood knaps flint but talks about starships and shit.” You get a lesson on the Alternian Industrial revolution which apparently involved bioengineering and enslaving psychics which is pretty horrifying as distractions go, but you’ll take it. 

Going back to the house is hard, because you lost your cool to a level exceeding the incident with the manhandling and the knife. You are embarrassed as fuck that Highblood managed to freak you out to the level that you ran like a rabbit from his spooky bullshit. You go back anyway, because not going back would be even more embarrassing. (You’re a goddamn man-baby aren’t you?)

Meulin comes with you. “Well, she seems to want everyone to get along and work together,” she says. “So let’s see if that’s even possible.” 

“Yeah, just no soul gazing shit,” you tell her. 

She snickers.

“What?” 

“‘Demoness’ wanted you to club between me and her moirail, but instead, you’re my and Demoness’ middle leaf.”

“I am not your middle leaf,” you say. “If I were any good at de-escalating shit I wouldn’t have been making money online with _creepy doll snuff porn_.” If you’d actually been any good interacting with people you would have been able to get gigs as a goddamn DJ. 

“So modest!” She says with a little bounce in her step that’s almost a skip. “Yet you stood between us, trusting that Demoness wouldn’t attack!” 

“Next time, I think I’ll just let her blow you up,” you tell her. “Let her go all nuclear war on your ass.” 

She teases you almost all the way to the hobbit hole, but falls silent when you actually get there. Highblood’s standing at the door. “No berserk attacking shit,” you whisper to her, seeing her go tense. Her only response is a growl, and a deliberate little tilt of her horns you think might mean something like, “whatever.” 

You head down first, and your heart light bullshit picks up bits and pieces of past fury, celebration, grief. Highblood is old, though he looks young and shit’s layered, it comes through. He stares down at you, his mouth a flat (guilty) line. “You have a seeing look,” he says, first off. Which yeah, no shit. 

“Apparently you scaring the shit out of me woke up whatever I had in self- defense,” you say. “Apparently there is an upper limit of scaring the shit out of me before I start seeing the heart light in everything.” 

“Thought you’d go for me, not run,” Highblood says. “Then you go all fuchsia bright and vanished, thought you broke through to psionic powers or some shit.”

“Good old fashioned running like hell,” you tell him. “Meulin was able to help me before my brains ran out my ears like in a bad sf-horror movie.” 

“You still going to play at being her auspistice?” Highblood asks. 

“Apparently I’ve found true ashen passion with Demoness and Disciple, my club is well and truly taken,” you say in a monotone while you fake-swoon, the back of your wrist pressed to your forehead. 

This gets you a brief snicker from Highblood. “So’m told,” he says. 

“Yeah well, it was a thing that happened. Demoness has plans. You know she has plans; she’s made no secrets about having plans. She’s your moirail; it’s up to you decide whether you want to work with them, or against them,” you tell him. Highblood’s mouth works, but he doesn’t say anything, just giving you a look that isn’t quite a glare. “What about you? You standing with Demoness’ plans? And what about the heretic?”

“You were doing so well, too,” you say with mock disappointment. “Say it with me ‘Dis-ci-ple,’” you say.

“Her-e-tic,” he says back. “And what about her plans?” 

“Her plans kind of make everything possible,” you say. “So yeah, I’m going along with the Demoness, who by the way wants Disciple to be working with us.” 

“And what about the Dis-ci-ple?” Highblood asks. 

“She thinks her cat-mom was the bestest lusus ever and she hates your guts,” you tell him. 

Highblood snorts. “Well she’s gone off now, doesn’t look like I’ll be breaking bread with her,” he says. 

Without looking, you know that’s true enough. “Maybe next time.” You get by him, head for the back room and your pile of furs and fold down and think about shit for a while. You eventually fall asleep and have uneasy dreams. 

Disciple turns up the next evening with one of the deer-looking things as a present. You’re eating the porridge thing Demoness usually makes for breakfast. Demoness takes the deer inside to finish cutting it up and Demoness also offers Disciple a drink of water. This is apparently some Significant Thing that means Disciple can come inside. “The idiot clown is still asleep,” Demoness says. 

“I don’t need the reassurance, I don’t fear him,” Disciple says. 

“Highblood snores, that’s pretty frightening,” you say. 

She gives you a quick look and almost smiles. “I like how you say ‘Highblood,’” she says. “Like you don’t know the weight of it, and don’t even care.”

“I don’t really have the frame of reference to,” you say. “And most of the time Demoness says it like it means ‘dumbass.’” 

“It does,” Demoness says. 

They do a lot of talking, and you listen to at least half of it. Demoness goes deeper than Highblood does, deeper than Disciple does, and it’s a little distracting. You’d been seeing all evening, and not saying a damn thing about it. Demoness may or may not know, but as long as you don’t say shit about it, you think you’re safe. The thing weighing and measuring shit is aware of the conversation, gives you little notes and points of interest. It’s also aware of Demoness cuddling with Highblood and threatening him with all kinds of filthy pale shit in front of God and everyone if he didn’t behave himself. It estimates that this tactic should prove to be 85.9% effective in deterring “Highblood Rage” without further interventions such as acting on the threat or escalating the threat being necessary.

“Highblood incoming,” you say, quiet like.

Disciple tenses, then very deliberately relaxes as Highblood wanders into the room, follows the edge and grabs himself a bowl and a spoon. Then he sits himself down at the table and serves himself, not looking in Disciple’s direction. “What are you all to be talking about?” He asks. His voice is all scratchy from having just woken up. He also has a considerable amount of bed head. This is, as always, disturbingly cute, even with knowing this guy is basically a Killer Klown from Outer Space. 

“Mostly who’s going out looking for the others, and who the others are,” you say. “There’s apparently two sets of human Guardians, but one set of Ancestors we need to look for.” 

“Need to,” Demoness repeats with emphasis. 

“She won’t explain why, but a lady’s got to have a few mysteries. We’re going to be using the house as a base of operations while teams take turns going out,” you continue. “While a team stays here in case anyone shows up.” 

“N’two sets of humans?” Highblood asks.

“We’re closest to the center,” you say. “So, twelve troll gods and eight human ones.” 

“Any of ‘em musicians?” Highblood asks.

“Yeah,” you say. You’d listen to the kid’s mixes of his friends’ music. They were pretty okay. 

Highblood makes a sleepy sort of grunt, and rubs at his face, and mumbles something about a paradise planet. You don’t get all of it. “I’ve nobody to look for, I’ll stay here,” he says. 

Disciple doesn’t like the idea, so there’s some argument where neither Disciple nor Highblood look in the other’s direction. You and Demoness kind of awkwardly mediate. Eventually something resembling a schedule is hammered out. 


	8. More Garthim and Dreamscape Bullshit Happen, and Also Possibly Ghosts

The plan ends up being that Demoness will pair up with you, Highblood and Disciple in turn and fly out looking for the others. Whoever’s left behind gets to search the immediate area since it seems pretty likely that “the others” are just as likely to show up within a few miles of the house. (Disciple was apparently a lot further out, having woken up in a cave somewhere in the mountains to the east, while you appeared about a couple miles from Demoness’ hobbit hole.) The reason why it’s Demoness pairing up with each of you is because it’s then easier for her to tell whoever was left behind at the house what’s going on via time shenanigans.

First trip out, is supposed to be Disciple and Demoness. Highblood is not happy about this, but covers with really stupid jokes about them leaving their ashen leaf (you) behind. The next two weeks are just you and Highblood, and occasionally some iteration of Demoness turning up to bully Highblood about something and let you know what’s going on. (So far, a whole lot of nothing, on both ends)

Highblood doesn’t sleep well. You don’t sleep well either, mostly because of Highblood. His Rage bullshit and your Heart bullshit do not get along, leading to dreams that are even freakier than the ones you’d already been having. Kurloz is old and has seen some shit, and has done some shit and is dealing with shit, and he does not appreciate someone who is not his moirail poking around in it. Likewise, everything would be rainbows and fucking kittens if he could just refrain from popping into your dreams like a psychic snake man assassin targeting the sad old man president who just wanted to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. He was a hurricane disturbing your massive levels of chill, blowing away your emotional lockdown. 

The dream that is the absolute last straw is one of the Garthim dreams. Big red-eyed motherfucker coming at you with sickles and you’re tripping on the turning gears of your kid’s hell planet. You’re also in a huge throne room decorated with huge splashy murals at the same time. Highblood is watching all this from a throne that is decorated with laughing skull-faces, horns, and bones. “This is such complete bullshit,” you shout at him as you fall back on the defensive, trying to avoid the immense armored thing coming at you.

“You expect me to do something about it?” Highblood asks. “Think I know what’s got you so set on cutting your heart out?” 

You stumble at that, and almost get your sword tangled up in a sickle. “You think I want to lose this fight?” 

“What else am I supposed to think?” Highblood says. “Seen this enough times, haven’t I?” 

“Because you somehow have less concept of personal space than I do,” you growl back. The monster comes at you again, you dodge again, swearing. “Get the fuck out of my head!” 

“How do you know you ain’t in mine?” Highblood asks. “For someone wanting space you _do_ worm your way into all the cracks.” 

_I need to see everything. I need to know everything. I need to make sure everything is under control._ The thought is so strong you lose track of what’s going on, and the monster knocks your feet out from under you. You barely manage to scramble away. There’s a burning in your chest, and you desperately try to wake up, but nothing happens. “There ever a time I stumbled in where you didn’t shove me right back out and then bitch about it for hours?” 

“Likewise,” Highblood says with a shit eating grin. “So maybe you’re just dreaming me.”

“Like hell.” Distracted again, your foot catches on a gear and your ankle decides it wants to hinge the wrong way. You stumble and roll, barely avoiding the swipe of a sickle. 

“You need help there, brother?” Highblood asks almost solicitously. He’s stepped off his throne, spinning long-handled clubs in his hands as he steps out onto the clockwork floor. The Garthim-whatsit doesn’t seem to be registering Highblood as a threat, and is still focused on you. 

“Is help actually on offer?” you ask, on the defensive in definitely more than one sense. “Since you think I’m doing this on purpose.” 

“Said so didn’t I? Anyway I’m curious what’s got you dreaming about getting culled by red-eyed drones.”

“Fuck if I know,” you say. The Garthim swipes at you again. You try to flashstep only it’s the wrong foot foot leading, the one attached to the wonky ankle. White hot dizzy-making pain shoots through you and you drop to your knees staring up at the sickle you know is going to hook you over onto your back. 

Only, Highblood comes up from behind and slams down on the monster’s back. The Garthim turns, faster than anything its size should, swinging at Highblood, who flashsteps. You think you’re going to take advantage of the red-eyed monster’s distraction and help out. Your ankle isn’t having any of it; another white hot flash of pain goes through you, and you stumble and fall, dropping your sword between two of the gears. _“Fuckdammittohell!”_

Like a moron you reflexively reach between the gears for your sword and nearly lose your hand as the gear you’re on spins around.Meanwhile Highblood and the Garthim-drone-whatever are dancing around each other. There’s a sound like talking coming from the drone, but nothing translates. (The monster had never spoken before.) Whatever it’s saying is making Highblood’s eyes go from their weird indigo-purple to orange and red. This is not a great sign. “You a ghost already, false prophet?” Highblood asks it. You get a strong feeling he isn’t seeing what you’re seeing. There’s more talking, and Highblood growls, a weird bass rattle. 

“So that’s not actually me, trying to punish myself?” you ask. 

The Garthim turns, and for a moment it’s a troll in some kind of high tech armor, helmet tucked under one arm, sickle in his other hand. He has a squarish face, a broken nose, blunt horns and blazing red eyes. You know without knowing how that he’d previously said “Do I look like a goddamn prophet, false or otherwise to you?” to Highblood. What he says to you is, “I’m not you. Yes, you’re punishing yourself. Now wake the hell up.” 

You wake up, and end up doing a lot of talking with Highblood. Well shouting and then talking. The closest thing to a solution is for the two of you to do most of the scouting in the immediate area in shifts. It keeps you both from getting too pissy at each other, and does wonders for your beauty sleep. 

(Provided you didn’t think too hard about what the Garthim-troll dude had said about you punishing yourself. You had questions. They were not getting answered by a ghost that cosplays as a crab-beetle puppet from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in your nightmares. They are not getting answered by Highblood, who does not know and has no desiring to speculate, quote unquote. You are 99.9% he is lying about that, and will be asking his moirail some questions. You also plan to be asking questions, because what the fucking hell.)

You spend most of the day wandering around in the woods, stone knife and makwa-whatsit hanging from loops in your skirt. This is mostly sightseeing and hoping you don’t run into poison ivy or something that thinks you might be edible. In the evening, you get back, do some sparring, eat dinner and go to sleep. Sometimes you and Highblood talk about random shit. Mainly what the hell you were supposed to do if anyone does show up. You are both at a complete loss.

In the evening, Highblood heads out to do the scouting, and comes back in the early morning hours. Sometimes he comes back with fish from the fish trap, or a few rabbitish creatures or birds that look a little like pheasants or ducks. After breakfast, it’s your turn to head out. 

You both continue working on the macuiahuitl. Highblood finishes off the flints, and has you make the resin after the slots for the flints have been carved into the club. The resin stinks and you suspect that half the ingredients are not actually necessary to the recipe. You both spend a lot of time fitting and gluing the flints, a little dizzy from the fumes, even with the door open. When it’s done you set it on some flat stones that will hopefully keep it from being glued to the table. (There are leaves to keep it from being glued to the stones.) The both of you escape the house and collapse under the trees. “How long before the resin cures?” you ask. 

“Couple days,” Highblood says. “Then we test it, make sure it set right. If it didn’t, gonna have to start over again.”

“Joy. Is that gonna cause trouble with whatever timeline Demoness is going with?”

“Shouldn’t, time ain’t nothing for her. We can make that macuiahuitl five or six times until we get it right and it won’t interfere none.” 

“As much as I love a craft project, I don’t want to be doing the same one five or six times,” you say. “I like to get things done right the first time.” 

Highblood makes an amused rumbling sound. “Don’t always happen like that, does it.” 

“No, but I’d like it to.” 

The curing turns out to be a success, and shortly after testing it, a Demoness turns up to take your makwa into the past. The one you were given, not the one you and Highblood had finished making. The makwa you made, which is currently sitting on the table, turns translucent for a moment and then it is indistinguishable from the one you had been given. The Demoness disappears before you can come up with any questions about that, which you don’t blame her for. She was kind of in a hurry at the time. 

You pick it up and turn it around in your hands. It looks exactly like the previous one, right down to the faint signs of use and sparring. You take it by the handle and give it a few practice swings. It feels exactly like it should, and at the same time feels completely alien. There’s a twenty percent chance that this is mostly because you saw the loop close, and you’re a little unnerved by what you saw, even though you’ve seen the Demoness do all kinds of time shit. (On the other hand, the time shit you were used to seeing was her multiplying herself, not whatever you saw with the macuiahuitl.)

The next day, you find a troll. He’s thin and wiry and sprawled out on the bank of a stream like he fell in, crawled out, and fell asleep. If he were standing up he’d be taller than you by a couple feet, but shorter than Highblood. The troll is bare-assed naked the same as you had been, and you kind of wish you’d thought to bring clothes with you on your hikes. The two pairs of horns tell you this guy is Mituna Captor, “The Psiioniic” and that waking him up is going to be all kinds of fun due to the “shoots lasers from his eyes” factor. 

This being a forest, there are a lot of long sticks, which you use to poke at the troll from a relatively safe distance, calling his name. The troll growls, swiping at the stick but slowly rolls up into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes and swearing. “Wh’thefuck? Wh’mI?Wh’you?” He asks blearily. 

“No clue, on the bank of a stream in bugfuck nowhere, Dirk Strider,” you say in order of questions asked. “You’re currently alive as a function of a universe creating game that kind of sucks. Your previous purpose was to act as a ‘Guardian’ to the future Player of the Game or at least set up conditions for them to exist. Is that too much, or should I go on?” 

“M’head is exploding,” Psiioniic explains. “N’my eyes.” 

“Yeah, I can see how that’d be a problem. Think you can get up and walk?” 

Psiioniic makes a noise that might or might not have been assent. 

You end up helping him into the shade, and giving him some water. He curls up against a tree, eyes tightly shut. He looks a little more yellow than gray, more like he’s sick from the headache than he’s sunburnt, you think. “You think you’re going to be okay? I can get you some clothes that’ll fit.” 

“How’d you know my hatchname?” Psiioniic asks instead. He’s trying to open his eyes to get a look at you. They’re weird: one eye glowing blue, the other red, pupils’ slightly brighter points. “What the hell, you’re not a troll.”

“Nope. It might have been Disciple or Demoness who told me, I don’t remember which.” It had probably been Disciple. 

The Psiioniic goes a little batshit at that. He tries to get up, but falls flat on his ass, his horns sparking red and blue. “Disciple? Where is she? Is she alright?” 

“She fine,” you tell him, you lay a hand on his shoulder, and feel a jolt. “Shit!” You pull your hand back, glaring. 

“Sorry,” Psiioniic says, not sounding particularly sorry at all. He’s still sparking, curled up and holding his head in his hands. 

“I was just trying to keep you from flailing around,” you tell him. “Seemed contraindicated with a headache.” 

“I’ll acknowledge you meant well,” Psiioniic says. He glances up at you with a [defensive] glare. “Disciple’s here too?”

“She’s looking for the rest of you, with Demoness.”

“Demoness?” Psiioniic asks, sounding confused.

“The Handmaid, but don’t call her that, she really hates it,” you say. 

“A myth cares about what title you use for her,” Psiioniic says blankly. 

“Maybe a myth wouldn’t, but a one hundred percent not fake Demoness would,” you tell him. “So. Clothes?” 

“Clothes,” Psiioniic says. 

“Kay.” 

You head back to the house, and into the back room, where Highblood is sawing away at logs. Since you still have the stick, you poke him awake with it. He swipes at it, giving you a bleary glare. “What, motherfucker?” 

“So, I found someone,” you tell him. “He just got here and he needs clothes, because he’s close to your height.” 

Highblood sits up. “What’d his horns look like?”

“Two pairs, one set smaller than the other, curved.” 

Highblood grunts. “He screaming for my blood like the olive?” 

“I haven’t told him you were around yet. So, another ‘heretic’?” 

“Condemned to helm her Imperious Condescension’s flagship, and kept alive by her will for hundreds of sweeps,” Highblood says. “Him, the olive blood, the jade and the freakblood in particular were given their own special punishments, though the olive blood escaped before she could be executed, and the one who allowed it to happen exiled.” 

“Break it to him easy and then run, in other words,” you say, rummaging around on his shelf. 

“I say he could have my clothes?” Highblood asks. 

“I’ll make him something that fits better later,” you say. There’s a chill of fear coming off from Highblood’s terror-field, but it’s half-hearted at best. He flops back down on his pile, grumbling. You grab the bag you’ve been using for Paleolithic sewing supplies and head out.

The Psiioniic is still where you left him, curled up miserably under the tree. “The skirt’s pretty adjustable, but you’re going to be swimming in the vest,” you tell him as you hand them over. 

“Whose clothes are these?” he asks immediately. His nose is wrinkling, and he’s baring his fangs while breathing in, kind of like a cat having a Flehmen response. “I know this smell,” he mutters, and then he looks at you. “You smell the same.” 

“We share the same room, and his stank gets around,” you say. “Catskin--Disciple--uh ‘pre-furs’ camping in the woods.” The impulse to pun came from the calculation in the back of your head that said that there was at least an eighty three percent chance that this would be reassuring to Psiioniic. 

“But she’s not here now?” Psiioniic asks, frowning. 

You shake your head. 

“I’ll wait for her, before I go anywhere with you.”

“Yeah, no one’s saying you got to go anywhere, but clothes?” You shake the vest and skirt at him. “I swear they’ve been washed more or less recently. They’ll need to be taken in, though.”

Psiioniic gives you an odd look. For a moment you feel a powerful [nostalgia] coming off from him. A troll you know as [Signless] with the nubbiest damn horns you’ve ever seen bringing you breakfast and a change of clothes. He seems too shabby and unimpressive to be any kind of prophet, let alone the prophet whose words helped you finally break free of your masters. Then you see his eyes, fiercely red, as if they were angry at the world, and his smile, pale and somehow exasperating. You’ve been dying for an argument since you first heard the whispered stories and sermons, and don’t have the words to make them. You are flustered as a wiggler with his first pitch crush. You know and don’t know right now that he’s been caring for you like you were his moirail. “You almost died, escaping,” the troll says. “You also managed to burn completely free of your dampers and restraints, taking your uniform with them.” (“I would have burned it anyway,” another voice says.) “These clothes should fit; the pants might need to be taken in.”

“Shit,” you say when things come back into focus. Psiioniic is growling at you. Yeah, he felt whatever happened too. “Sorry. I swear that wasn’t on purpose.” 

The growl gets quieter, and then Psiioniic does a little tilt thing with his horns. “I thought she scoured everything about him out of me,” he says, more to himself than to you. “Maybe I should thank you.” He absently puts the clothes on. 

“She’s the Empress, right? And ‘he’ is Signless.” 

Psiioniic nods. 

“The Demoness told me the details about that,” you tell him. “He’ll be alive now, along with some people you probably wish weren’t alive, and other people you won’t care either way.” 

He nods again. Nothing much is showing on his face but he's feeling [overwhelmed, excited, fearful, happy]. “Does that have to do with this ‘Game’ you mentioned?” 

“Yeah, let me tell you about the Game, and what our parts were in it,” you tell him.


	9. Alternia Was a Survival Horror Game with Both Fast and Slow Zombies News At Eleven

You talk about the Game, explain as much as you know about the current situation as presented by Demoness. Psiioniic has a lot of questions, and is pretty skeptical concerning the details. The Demoness, mythical or otherwise does not inspire trust, and he wants to know what her angle is. You answer as many questions as you can, which is not nearly as many as he’d like. He wants to know about his friends. (His family.) He wants evidence they’re out there somewhere. 

“And you say you saw Disciple, spoke to her?” he asks. His tone is careful, but there’s a lot underneath. He’s old, old the way that Highblood or Demoness are old, and a lot of what you’re seeing is a dark little room with a serious hentai situation. (There’s a ghost pain in your head, running down your spine, through your shoulders.) His memory of her age keeps shifting, and you try very hard not to see anything at all. 

“Spoke to her, camped out with her for a few days,” you reply. “She was not interested in spending much time under the same roof as Highblood.” Psiioniic snorts. “I think I share the sentiment,” he says. “I’ll stay out here. I’ve lived rough before.” 

“Yeah, but that was on your own planet,” you say. “Different animals, different plants, different dangerous things.”

“You could be my native guide,” Psiioniic says.

“Yeah, but not actually a native. I’m barely figuring things out myself,” you say. Despite the objection, you tell him as much as you can about the forest surrounding the Hobbit Hole. The conversation goes over birds, fish, prey animals, predators, plants that were edible or were to be avoided. (Some of which had been pointed out to you by Disciple.) 

You figure he won’t actually have much of a problem out here. This is partly because you haven’t run into any predators big enough to be a threat yet, and partly because eye lasers. His eyes are like LEDs, and there’s some kind of Tesla thing going on with tiny, miniature mad scientist lightnings arching occasionally from horn to horn. 

After some more talking, you head back to the Hobbit Hole just as the sun starts going down. Highblood is getting ready to head out. “You didn’t bring him in?” Highblood asks, frowning. 

“Was I supposed to?” you ask in return, and start making yourself something to eat. Smoked fish and greens, which was not actually half bad. “He declined my invitation and said he wanted to camp out there.” 

“He still all looking like a corpseflower?” Highblood asks. 

The image you get for the word “corpseflower” are starved-gaunt figures wrapped in vines and flowers, surrounded by a haze of what you suspect is pollen. “I have no idea of what that is,” you tell Higblood. You transfer the food to a wooden plate and start eating with a flat, square-tipped scoop made of carved wood. 

“Undead,” Highblood says. “Not so quick as daygaunts, or dangerous as droppers. Don’t need to be, all surrounded by a haze of dreams and slow death like they are.”

“Undead?” In the back of your head you hear someone singing “Bela Lugosi’s dead (undead, undead.)” This is fucking stupid because zombies are not vampires. Wait, had Bela Lugosi been in any zombie movies? There was _White Zombie_ , but those zombies didn’t count since they weren’t undead, just under mind control. You’d think he was fucking with you, but all you get from him is a sincere belief that real actual undead are a thing. This didn’t necessarily mean anything, the likelihood of people believing that fake shit is real and all that. “You expect me to believe it was _Day of the Dead_ on your planet?” 

“When else are the undead supposed to get their hunt on?” Highblood asks. He looks amused, in a grim sort of way in the face of your intense skepticism. “There’s not any shitty ass wasp, or fungus or plant that takes your bean sized selves over to get their mad propagation on, on your world?”

“There’s things that do that, but not to humans,” you say. “He did not seem to be wrapped in vines, or have flowers growing out of him when I saw him last.” You eat some more. “Is there a reason you expect him to look like a zombie?”

“How I was seeing him last,” Highblood says. “Skinny corpse hanging from the rigging, never could figure how the body was screaming, but its ghost so calm over the com.” His tone is weird, half disturbed, half definitely fucking with you. 

The images of a room filled with sea salt and tentacles that you’d been getting off of Psiioniic come back to you. “I think his situation was more sushi than bonsai, but sure, I can see the comparison,” you tell him. “He didn’t bring any wiggly friends with him. Again, why did you expect him to?” 

Highblood shrugged. “Don’t see how something so tangled as helmsman biowire wouldn’t find a way to hitch a ride to this new world. It digs into every part of them, and hollows them out ‘til there’s nothing left at all.”

You point your scoop at Highblood. “I think we’ve reached the end of creepy shit I want to think about tonight, thanks. Have an awesome patrol.” 

Highblood’s brows go up. “You think you can dismiss me?” 

“Who me? I’m saying have a good night. Bye.” You wave bye-bye with your scoop and go back to eating, deliberately ignoring him. Highblood snorts, and heads out the door. 

Highblood does not have a good night. You wake up the next morning to Demoness bullying his slightly singed self into tending the burns. There is also a new troll by the door, a hair shorter than Highblood and broad across the shoulders. His horns have cones at the end, and he looks like he’d like to be anywhere but here. He also looks like he’s recently had his ass kicked. Highblood is glaring at the new guy, the new guy’s eyes are averted but he won’t retreat, and Demoness keeps smacking Highblood. 

When Demoness sees you, she grabs Highblood and forces him into the back room growling, “feed Expatriate and get out.”

“Right,” you say as you get out of their way. You eye the new guy, who is eyeing you back. His eyes are a deep blue, and his hair is in a long tail that looks like it had come partly undone at some point, which went along with the "beaten up" look. He’s wearing a skirt and vest that has a different cut from the one that Demoness came up with, and has some decoration at the hem, crescents like horse hooves. “You hungry? Your options are fish and greens, porridge and fish, porridge and greens.” You point out where the food is, and make breakfast. 

The new guy peels himself away from the door and shuffles around getting himself breakfast. He goes for the porridge pot and the greens. You have the fish and porridge. After a couple of mouthfuls of breakfast you ask, “so, are you Highblood’s kisme-whatsis or something?”

New guy gives you the sideeye. “I would never presume so. Much like I would not presume to address my betters without appropriate introduction.” 

You make a show of patting down your vest and your skirt. “Sorry, no cards of introduction or what the fuck ever. You have a butler to let me know whether you’re at home to visitors?” 

New guy stares at you for a few seconds. “I suppose not,” he says, and digs into his breakfast. 

“I’m Dirk Strider by the way,” you tell him. “And you’re…Expatriate?” 

He nods. “Expatriate Darkleer.” 

There is not a lot of small talk over breakfast. You confirm that Demoness and Disciple told him about the Game and the Ancestor and Player thing. He had apparently woken up about a “sweep” ago not far from another troll, “the Dolorosa.” That had initially not gone very well, but they had ended up in “cahoots.” There had been some trouble when the returning party had encountered Highblood, and this “Dolorosa” was off in the woods with Disciple and Psiioniic having a family reunion. 

After breakfast you head out, with Expatriate tagging along. Again, not a lot of talking, a few times, you even lose track of the guy, though not in a creepy way. You just kind of forget about him, and are slightly surprised he’s there when you do take notice of him again. “So, your deal is?” you ask him after the second or third time it happens. “Aspect wise, I mean.”

“I’m told my Aspect is Void,” Expatriate says. “And that I was a Page of Void. I am not entirely certain what that means.”

“Right now, it seems to mean I keep forgetting you’re there, big guy. Which is weird because you’re making more noise than I am, stomping around.” Because that was the other thing; when you did notice him, he was loud as fuck.

Expatriate frowns. “I am not stomping. I simply have a heavier tread due to my greater mass.” 

“Highblood is quiet,” you point out. 

Expatriate frowns more. That is definitely a look of disapproval there. “The Grand Highblood has certain advantages.”

“Right.” 

You do your usual patrol, and eventually run into Disciple and her family. They have a campsite set up and are well…“I thought you could only have one moirail,” you say, stepping into the camping area. Psiioniic, Disciple and a third troll are all cuddling by the fire. The third troll jumps a bit when she hears your voice; half curled into a defensive position that Disciple tugs her out of. Disciple gives you a mildly irritated-amused look. The Psiioniic reacts, but not as badly as the third troll, tensing then relaxing when he sees you. 

“They aren’t my moirails,” Disciple says. “This is Dolorosa, our mother?”

“Pleased to meet you and all that,” you say. “Since it seemed to be a problem with Master Darkleer over here, I still don’t have a card of introduction, but you can call me Dirk.” 

Dolorosa smiles at you. “Expatriate is like that,” she says. “I hope he didn’t offend?” 

“Nah, he didn’t try to feel me up like Highblood did, so we’re good.” You hear a choking sound behind you. Disciple and her friends look horrified and appalled. Yeah, that was what you might call a mistake, considering the entire Actual Freddy Kruegar thing. “It’s okay,” you say, a little weakly. “Demoness pacified his ass, so no hard feelings.” There’s more choking behind you, and you look back at a very blue-flushed and sweaty Expatriate. “Do you have a problem?” 

More choking and attempts at speech. There was also some flailing. 

“Oh no,” Dolorosa says, getting up quickly from where she was sitting to go over to Expatriate. She sits him down on the other side of the campfire and talks to him in a low voice. From what you can hear, Expatriate is absolutely horrified that your insolence level is off the charts. There’s some mention of unnatural behavior, which you suppose is fair. He’s also pretty embarrassed because he stopped having fits like this sweeps ago, and now he’s in a much younger body _that keeps having them._

“Dirk, you did not mention that earlier,” Disciple says, giving you an honest to god worried look. You have no idea how to feel about it. 

“He did not actually hurt me. It did not seem relevant to any of our discussions,” you tell her. You sit down. “Also, Demoness screamed at him and threw his entire pile of shit at him, so that was hilarious.” Well, after the fact. “So, are they moirails?” you ask, pointing a thumb at Dolorosa and Darkleer. “Because she seems to be calming his shit.” 

“No,” Dolorosa and Expatriate chorus. 

“Gross,” Psiioniic says. 

Disciple nudges Psiioniic in the ribs, and he nudges her back. “I have no idea,” Disciple says. “And I have no idea of what to think of the development.” She’s giving Expatriate and Dolorosa a hard, thoughtful look. “He was the Executioner.”

“The only reason I’m not kicking his ass is because I have his trial on file and it was awesome,” Psiioniic says. “They beat the shit out of him, and he wouldn’t recant letting you escape, even when they threatened to break his hands. Not that they would actually do it because blue blood.” Then he frowns. “Wait, no I don’t. Shit.” He wilts with disappointed.

“I don’t care if it was awesome,” Disciple says, and frowns at Psiioniic. “You shouldn’t either.” 

“Ugh, not like that, I swear, no schadenfreude,” Psiioniic says. “Just. He was pretty brave?” 

You must be getting a weak stomach for all of this torture bullshit you keep hearing about, because you interrupt with, “Soo, what happened last night with Highblood? Demoness chased us out of the house and shoved Highblood into a pile.”

What happened was pretty much a mess, from what you can gather. Highblood for whatever reason had gone looking for Psiioniic. He had seemed pretty determined to get Psiioniic to come back to the Hobbit Hole, Psiioniic was just as determined that no, fuck that. Then Demoness and Disciple returned with the new trolls and Dolorosa had gone after Highblood, Highblood had gone after Darkleer and Psiioniic and Demoness had settled matters with telekinesis and lasers. Then Darkleer, Highblood and Demoness returned to the house. 

“Okay, so that was a thing that definitely happened,” you say. “I am beginning to wonder how Demoness thinks she’s going to keep everyone from killing everyone else.”

“She can start by making GHB fuck off,” Psiioniic says. “Just, fuck off forever.” His shoulders hunch and he leans into Disciple. She cuddles him close, and plays with his hair. 

There is not much you can say to that. “He was kind of weirdly concerned that you might have some kind of parasite infection. I don’t know what that was about.” Psiioniic gives a ‘don’t care’ tilt to his horns. 

You and Expatriate end up camping out with Disciple and her family after finishing the patrol. You because you’re pretty sure Demoness is still working her wiles on Highblood, Expatriate because he’s the reason she needs to. You all talk around subjects no one really wants to get into, eat dinner, and go to sleep. Your dreams are pretty vague, and don’t involve dead brothers or lava rivers. 

It’s getting dark when you head back to the house to see if all’s clear the next evening. Expatriate has been persuaded to stay at the campsite. (Why he thought going back to the Hobbit Hole when Highblood was clearly going to be a dick about it was unknown.) Highblood and Demoness are not having one of their really loud old- married arguments, and when you enter, you don’t find them canoodling, or Demoness making food while Highblood draws in the sand or on the wall humming to himself, all by now familiar signs that things were now chill. 

It’s quiet though, and there’s someone sitting at the table, his back to you. He’s human and blond and wearing a set of your clothes. He immediately turns as you walk in, a cup in his hands. It’s Dave. Something clenches in your chest, and you don’t know what to do. His eyes are wide like he’s seeing a ghost or a dream. It’s the kid, your little bro and this wasn’t supposed to happen. Wasn’t he supposed to be on the other side of some kind of cosmic door? 

You can’t breathe and you sure as hell can’t speak. 

“Dirk?” Dave asks, as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Holy shit. Dirk.” He starts to get up. He walks toward you. “Kid. You're here too?” 

And you can’t handle this, so you abscond. 


	10. This is Turning Out to Be Some Serious “The Stand” Bullshit Here

There were eight humans. Demoness had said there were eight humans and twelve trolls. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to you that you’d be seeing an adult Dave. The Dave you had seen, who had looked at you like you were something he had never expected to see was an adult Dave, and that look had been for a kid version of you. _There is a kid version of you who was the Player instead of the Guardian. ___

__  
_ _

This is a thing you had known, but you hadn’t asked about the details. It just hadn’t occurred to you somehow, or it was just something in the back of your mind while you dealt with what had seemed like the bigger issue of Little Cal. (The bigger issue of you having fucked everything up.) There were eight humans and twelve trolls, and you hadn’t even thought to ask or realized you might see an adult version of your kid. Eight humans and twelve trolls translated to Eight Guardians and twelve Ancestors, after all. 

(You are possibly an idiot. You were definitely not prepared in any sense of the word for the _feeling_ that rushed through you, just seeing him. It was so strong you couldn’t even put a name to it. Knew fuck all about where it was coming from or where it was going. The kid. He’s your kid, but also not at all your kid. What the fuck. Just. What the fuck.)

Eventually you come to a stop by the pond that’s to the south of the Hobbit Hole. This is a place you’ve ended up by more than once on patrols, or back when you were just wandering around in the woods trying to get your mind off the lack of access to your usual distractions. You sit on the bank and slowly cool down. You can hear frogs and birds, and a slight breeze in the trees. The fireflies are starting to light up, and it’s not yet moonrise. “So that was a thing that happened,” you tell the darkening sky. The adult version of your kid was probably not impressed by your lack of appropriate Strider swag.

You lie back and just…breathe for a while. The ground is cold and little wet, smelling of damp earth and grass. You close your eyes, and feel your heartbeat slow down, though your brain is still going in circles. There’s an occasional plop from the pond, and rustling in the trees. There’s nothing here that’s threatening though, even for a city boy, so falling asleep is a slow, easy progression.

He’s sitting on the futon in the apartment, curiously investigating a game controller, turning it around in his hands. It’s the troll that had been wearing the space armor from your dream nights ago, the troll who had also been a Garthim and who Highblood had referred to as a false prophet. (You remember him asking, “do I look like a prophet to you?” to Highblood.) Right now he’s wearing some kind of black uniform with bright red trim. His eyes match the trim, and his hair is shaggy and almost covers his short, thick and rounded horns. “Are you going to keep being a dipshit about this, or are we going to talk?” 

You open your mouth to say something--you’re not sure what--but you’re interrupted. “What’s there to talk about?” Young Punk you asks. “I’m pretty sure I fucked everything up. Manchurian candidate all up in, but I gotta own some of this bullshit.” The punk version of yourself is by the door, looking like he wants to abscond, but also like he wants the last word. You are by the kitchen.

“You’re being a dipshit,” the troll says, and glances in your direction. “You have less excuse than he does.”

“Yeah, but he’s me,” Young Punk you says, his glance following the troll’s. 

“Am I interrupting something?” you ask. 

“Not much,” the troll says, looking between you and the punk version of yourself. “Just an attempt at actual communication instead of guilt-fueled symbolic bullshit.”

“Is that what the evisceration was about?” You trace a line over your sternum. “What was eating my heart supposed to mean?” _Guilt-fueled symbolic bullshit._

“What do the dead wiggler corpses mean?” the troll asks in return. 

“You seem to know, why don’t you tell me?” 

“Your Player iteration is a Prince of Heart,” the troll says. “Princes are a destroyer class, like all the Sgrub classes, that’s a two edged sword. Destroyers both destroy and self-destruct, and Heart is the realm of emotions and the soul. You were overshadowed in one sense or another by the juju your entire life, and because you’re a Prince of Heart, you splintered to deal with it.” The troll points to younger you. “But you know that already.”

“Just call us Trudi Chase,” Punk You says with a salute. “Except don’t do that at all because no.”

“How is the Ghost of Christmas Past supposed to be me dealing with it?” you ask. 

“No fucking clue,” the troll says cheerfully. “I’m a fucking Knight of Blood, or the Player version of me is. I might argue with myself, but I don’t go creating actual alternate versions of myself to deal with shit.”

“This is not dealing with shit,” Punk You says. “He isn’t dealing with shit.” He gives you a look of barely concealed contempt. “He sees a Dave from a different universe and he can’t handle it for shit. Complete loss of fucking chill.”

“Fuck off Sybil, I didn’t see you stepping in to deal with it,” you say.

“Blood is about community bonds, the social contract,” the troll says interrupting the pretty good glower you have going on with your younger self. “Loyalty and shit like that. At least that’s what I’ve put together from my own experience and watching various bullshit unfold. It’s also about clade or I guess ‘familial’ bonds, which is why it’s me who’s talking to you and not, I don’t know, the one who would have been and was our Prince player or who would have been and was our Heart player.”

“Talk to me about what?” you ask. 

The troll’s brows lift. “Familial bonds and social contracts. Which you’ve been ignoring in favor of me eviscerating you, while you’re neck deep in wiggler corpses.”

Younger You snorts. “It’s not like we can fix what we fucked up.”

“Fix yourself,” the troll says. “You have the tools, but you need to be a little more stable if you’re going to face her.” 

“How does that work, if we’re a ‘destroyer’ class?” you ask. “What tools?” 

“Who are we facing?” Younger you ask. 

“Demoness told you someone’s standing on the place where the Gods need to come through, right?” the troll asks. 

Younger You nods.

“That’s ‘her,’” the troll says. “Your tools are the clade that’s forming around you, your mind, and your own two hands.” 

“My mind so far is full of holes and teenage punks so far,” you say. “I’m not sure how that’s going to help anything.”

“Fuck you,” Younger You says, glaring at you. 

The troll snorts. “I get the feeling you hate yourself more than I get to hating myself, again without splintering into an entirely different person.” 

You want to say “I don’t hate myself,” but you can’t. The troll is giving you a look, soft and sad. It hurts seeing that look, and it makes you angry, too.

“Think about it when you wake up,” the troll says, and your dreams spin away into nonsense. 

It’s Highblood who finds you. He pokes you awake with a stick in your face that you slap away. The moon is half-way up and shining butter-yellow light through the trees. (You were still getting used to it.) You blink up blearily at the troll, who’s squatting on his heels next to you. “What?” 

“Don’t mean to be disturbing your rest, but shouldn’t you be getting it under a roof or a proper camp?” he asks. 

“Nah, I’m plenty comfortable like this,” you say, sitting up. You groan as your body protests the process. 

Highblood laughs, of course. “I can hear your spine creaking,” he says. “I think you did not have so comfortable a sleep as you might have, had you gone to your pile.”

Feeling unusually direct you say, “there was an unexpected visitor.” 

“That red-eyed motherfucker sharing half your name?” Highblood asks. 

You shrug. “He didn’t come in with the others.” 

“Demoness came in with him. He was out in the garden dead asleep,” Highblood says. “Woke up in a fury, full of rage for trolls, but calmed him down some. Left him alone so he could get himself together, then you come in.” 

“There was a case of…mistaken identity,” you say. “He looks like my kid. Hell, he _is_ my kid, in another universe or timeline or what the fuck ever.” 

“And you’re all with some kind of lusus bond?” Highblood asks. “He’s all saying something similar.”

“Yeah,” you say, because there isn’t much else you can think of. “Jesus.”

“You coming back to Hive?” Highblood asks.

You rub your face. “Might as well.”

So you make your way back to the Hobbit Hole, while Highblood goes off to do his patrol. Demoness is waiting for you on the doorstep. “What happened, then?” she asks.

“Pale?”

“Curious,” Demoness says. “Kurloz is my moirail. You’re an idiot I talk to.”

“Best friends forever,” you say in your sincerest tone. “I don’t know. He’s still here?” This is clearly a stupid question to ask, because Demoness rolls her eyes. You are inclined to agree with her. 

She tilts her horns in a gesture, come inside. You follow her in. The other Dave is still at the table. He’s your age, your current age, and he’s giving you the same wary, assessing look you’re giving him. You get something to eat and drink, and sit down. Demoness sits down too, taking out some sewing and pretending she isn’t going to be sticking her nose into your conversation if she feels like it. (If you have a conversation.)

After a few minutes, Dave says, “so. You’re a version of Dirk.”

“And you’re a version of Dave,” you say.

“You kind of looked like you were going to throw up, when you saw me. Then you ran off,” the other Dave says. “Don’t know what that was about.”

“It was kind of a shock,” you say. “First living Dave I’d seen in a while.” 

Dave’s brows lift. His expressions, you’ve noted, are minimal, not perfectly blank. “How am I a common noun.” 

“Knight of Time,” you say. “You’d make stable time loops and there’d be multiple iterations of doomed versions of yourself. You died a lot. In the game.” 

“But he wins?” Dave asks.

“So I’m told,” you say. “Your kid too, apparently, eventually. The Demoness tell you anything about him?”

“Not much more than Rose did,” Dave says, glancing at the Demoness. “Just that he was a god trapped on the other side of a cosmic door, with Sea Hitler standing on the spot where they all need to come through. Apparently our hostess is Mother Abagail to the Crockerbitch’s Randall Flagg.”

“No, she’s _dating_ Randall Flagg,” you say. “Gonna bring him to salvation one snuggleshush at a time.”

“Now there are two who make stupid references to stupid things I have no interest in,” Demoness says. “One was more than enough.” She pokes you. “Explain.”

It takes a moment because you’re caught on the basic setup of the book, and the implied parallel with your current living situation, and the way Demoness is looking for people. Was it likely some of the people were you were looking for were going to ally with “Sea Hitler”? You put that aside for the moment and explain the plot of _The Stand._

“Highblood is not ‘Randall Flagg’,” she says, as if she’s just given due consideration to the comparison. “Calling him _Killer Klown from Outer Space_ made more sense. Mother Abagail is stupid lowblood who dies off when powers not useful to plot.”

Okay, probably she had given it due consideration. Dave (what can you call him to differentiate him from the kid. Other Dave? Alter Dave?) is watching the exchange with an bland expression, though there’s a slight uptick of a smile. “King’s fondness for Magical Negroes aside, do we follow the plot in any sense? I’m guessing she’ll be looking for allies. Is she going to find them, or whatever?”

“Further up the lines won’t tell me shit,” Demoness grumbles. “Get general locations from closer in, but not who I’m gonna find, or who she has.” 

“Time traveler,” you explain. 

“Was Witch of Time,” Demoness explains. “Good to have another Time.”

“Well, if you’re going against the Crockerbitch, I guess you got my sword,” he says. 

“Club,” you tell him, and show off your makwa. “Unless you’re a swordsmith.”

“More of a wordsmith,” Dave says. “I was a producer before I was a dashing revolutionary. Well technically I was a dashing revolutionary producer.” 

The two of you talk. Dave talks about his timeline, and you talk about yours, and what you remember of the Game. You skirt around your training methods, but even the little bit you tell him makes him frown. “A difficult lusus.” Shit. In human-speak that would be “abusive fuckstain.” (It had been necessary; you were trying to make him stronger only apparently not because you were the Manchurian Candidate and your subconscious was full of goddamn corpses, all of them your brother. Would you have done a better job if Cal hadn’t been in your head? You don’t know, you aren’t sure, you keep coming up with different variables, different numbers.) You want to know how he raised other-you, so you ask him.

Dave shakes his head. “My kid was going to be alone in the middle of an ocean after the extinction of humanity,” he says. “I made what preparations I could, because it wasn’t likely Sea Hitler was going to make any effort toward taking care of my or Rose’s kid.”

“Absolute minimum socialization,” you hear yourself say. “Shit.”

Dave gives you an inquiring look.

“Players can survive just about anything. They’re more durable, they don’t need as much socialization. They develop their mental faculties pretty fast, their hand-eye coordination and everything. They’re designed for the Game, as much as being Paradox-destined. If they aren’t taught they’ll teach themselves. It was a hypothesis. I mean, my kid survived crashing on a meteor. I survived crashing on a meteor. That’s not a thing a regular human baby would be able to do. I think your version of Dirk would have been pretty close to the outer extreme I theorized.”

“Thank you, if I didn’t feel like shit about not being there for my kid, I do now,” Dave says in a monotone.

“Dirk was Prince of Heart,” Demoness says. It defuses things, a little.

“Snerk,” Dave says dryly. Flat out says it, instead of a snort or something. “What does that mean? Besides being a dick.”

“So far, it means I can see the heartlight in everything,” you say blandly. “The Force is strong within me.”

“Heh.” Dave gives you a slight, sour smile.

Demoness on the other hand is exasperated with you. “What idiot reference are you making now?”

“It’s a magical ambient something or other from a series of movies, that in theprequel series is caused by some kind of bacteria,” you tell her. 

“No worse than telepathic fungus,” Dave says, which almost doesn’t sequit until it does. The books about the telepathic dude with the robot horse fighting Communism and also Anarchism. Robot horses were awesome. 

“Hell yes, telepathic fungus,” you say, and a fist bump occurs. 

“Hell fucking no telepathic fungus,” Demoness says. 

“The telepathic fungus just turned itself into whatever the person was thinking of, no zombies involved,” you tell her.

“Still no telepathic fungus,” Demoness says, and gives an honest to god shudder. You thought she had a stronger stomach than that, considering. You guess everyone has to have their squicks.

Heh. “Zombies were actually a thing on her planet,” you explain to alternate-Dave. “Lots of things liked to parasitize trolls, apparently.”

“Sorry about that, then,” Dave says, going for a charming smile. Demoness doesn’t roll her eyes, but somehow gives the impression of having done so. “Heh,” Dave says, giving her a slighter, but also more genuine smile. “We’re the only humans you found so far?” 

“So far,” Demoness says. 

Dave nods. “When can I get in on the search parties you mentioned?” In Dave’s head you see a woman, short blond hair, goth make up, a pair of very, very sharp knitting needles. He really wants to find this woman, his sister and co-conspirator. He loves her. 

You pull back, almost guiltily from that.

“Maybe wait til your powers manifest,” Demoness says.

“I got powers that manifest?” Dave asks. Not skeptical, you think, just curious.

“Knight of Time,” she says. “Though not sure how that will translate, here.”

“What’s it like in the Game?”

“They maintain time loops within the alpha session, to ensure that it remains the winning timeline. They could multiply using doomed versions of themselves in combat, though I think that’s almost a given power of any Time Player. They are protectors and defenders,” Demoness says. “Loyal to their chosen companions, throw themselves in front of weapons for them if necessary.”

Dave goes a little green around the gills, but he also laughs. “Jesus. She used to joke that I was her knight in shining armor. She was on the ground the last I saw her, bleeding out. We were both bleeding out. She said ‘don’t throw the fight, but we aren’t supposed to win.’ What the hell am I supposed to say to something like that?”

You know fuck all of how to deal with something as raw as that, so you keep your mouth shut.

“She was Seer of Light,” Demoness says, “so not much.”

Dave swallows, takes a couple deep breaths. “Okay so, manifesting. How does that work?”

“By itself, though Dirk got a push from Highblood.”

“I don’t recommend,” you say. “Screaming meemies are involved.”

“Gotta avoid those screaming meemies,” Dave says.

“Little fuckers get into everything,” you say with a nod.

You reach out to each other for another fistbump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book References: Christopher Stasheff's "Warlock" series. And of course "The Stand," by Stephen King. 
> 
> Other References: Trudi Chase and Sybil, both cases of Dissociative Personality Disorder, or Multiple Personality Disorder. (The books are "When Rabbit Howls" for the troops for Trudi Chase, and "Sybil.")


	11. Strider to the Infinite Power

After some more talking about nothing in particular, Alternate Dave gets set up on a pile of fur in the living area near the firepit, and you retreat for the bedroom. You fall onto your pile and eventually fall asleep. Your dreams involve your kid’s lava world again, though there’s an absence of corpses. The younger version of you theorizes that this is because of meeting Alternate Dave. Some part of your subconscious has checked off the “Dave is alive square,” because of his presence. “Are you sure about that?” you ask him. “Because from my end, he’s not the kid I raised.”

“Which is probably a good thing,” the younger version says. “He was definitely not happy about your training methods. I wonder how the kid feels?” 

“Probably like I fucked him up, because I did fuck him up,” you say. This is no longer hard to say or think. The Knight of Blood or whoever he was had made it pretty clear to you. You fucked up, you were fucked up. The numbers in your head start to calculate exactly what percentages of fucked up. “Did I fucking ask you?” you mutter. You’re a little surprised when the numbers stop. There is a very long, almost offended silence from the numbers. “What the hell?” 

Meanwhile, the younger version of you has a thoughtful look on his face. “Huh.” 

“I repeat: What the hell?” You glare at Younger You. He clearly does not care. 

“The numbers aren’t just an internal calculator,” he says. “They’re another ‘splinter.’”

“Doesn’t seem to be as mouthy as you though,” you say. “Or visible.” 

_“I don’t need to be,”_ a voice says. _“I provide statistical data concerning emotions and the soul that is accurate within a percentage of 99.9999%”_

“I’m kind of suspicious of getting fed information these days from unknown third parties,” you say. 

_“I am not unknown,”_ the voice says. _“I am you.”_ The splinter appears, and he’s your age. Your old age that is: a guy in his thirties. He’s wearing a white dress shirt, a pair of black slacks and his hair combed down flat, and a tie. He’s got a pair of thick rectangle glasses hanging from his shirt pocket. Cubefarm clothes. 

“You look like you’re cos-playing Dilbert,” you tell him.

He just stares at you, and that is definitely you. He does not give a fuck. He’s appearing like this to fuck with you and your polo shirt and baseball cap outfit. And make fun of your shades. He can go fuck himself; the shades make the Strider brand. _“Have you or have you not been using the statistical information I’ve provided?”_ he asks.

“Yeah, I guess.”

_“Then why would you have problems receiving it in the future?”_

“Because before, you were just a weird calculator, and now you’re him,” the younger version of you says. “And we can’t be trusted.” 

You give the younger version of you a flat look. “My head is full of holes and bullshit, what am I supposed to trust?”

Younger You runs his hands through his spiked up hair, an impatient frustrated gesture you’d managed to train yourself out of. “I don’t know, ask the numbers guy!” 

“Statistician,” you say. You glance at Cubefarm. “You mind if I call you that?”

Cubefarm shrugs. _“It sounds okay. It’s not Revenge of the Nerd, which is what I expected.”_

“That would have been my choice,” younger you mutters. “What the fuck is with the white collar bullshit?”

_“Pam would have liked us to have a normal job, a socially acceptable job,”_ the Statistician says.

“Like that was going to happen,” younger you says. “Heh.”

You think about that. The implication was that the Statistician’s appearance was based off of wanting to please your favorite foster mother. Ordinary young man with an ordinary job, you can almost hear her telling one of her friends how good you were with computers. On the other hand, this was not actually her idealized image of what she would have wanted; it was a fractured and ironic version. (This is supposing you had been aware of her idealized image of how she wanted you to succeed in life…which you are not entirely sure you were.) 

“How many ‘splinters’ do I have?” you ask.

The Statistician gives you an irritated look. _“Why don’t you have me calculate Pi instead?”_ he asks. _“You have potentially an infinite number of splinters.”_

“You cannot calculate Pi,” younger you says, also giving the Statistician an irritated look.

_“It would be easier than calculating splinters,”_ the Statistician says.

“So far it’s just been the two of you,” you say. 

_“There are potentially more,”_

You look at Younger You. He shrugs. “You think I have any idea of what he’s talking about?”

“You turned up around the same time he did,” you say. “And if I secretly wanted to be a mama’s boy, why would I have a Punk splinter?” 

Younger You rolls his eyes. “Oh no, a halfway decent maternal figure might be proud of him, that means he’s a mama’s boy! Was getting made fun of for wanting to learn how to sew in Home Ec and doing a decent job of it that traumatic?” 

“Fuck you,” you say, feeling your chest tighten. “She wasn’t _halfway_ decent.” She died when you were seventeen. You don’t remember shit about that year, not even graduating, though that’s a thing you know you had to have done. There was a diploma and everything. A year later, you found your kid. ( **She could have helped,** a voice says in the back of your head.  She would have helped with the kid. Another voice says. ~~She wouldn’t have understood the training.~~ ) 

“Are you a mama’s boy?” Younger asks mockingly. “A big sword jock like you?” 

_“The Punk’s fracture point is 75% awareness that something wrong was happening with an additional 2% for guessing the actual source of the problem,”_ the Statistician says. _“23% percent is memories of being a teenager in occasional conflict with his foster mother.”_

“What’s yours?” _“The need for 99.9999% situational awareness,”_ the Statistician replies in a flat deadpan that is not nearly as funny getting as dishing out. _“And ironic Dilbert cosplay.”_

The next morning you wake up annoyed, your head full of voices and thoughts that weren’t quite yours. You had more muses than a teen original slash fic writer on Livejournal, apparently. Your dreams had gone all fractal last night at one point, multiple conversations happening at once. It was like they all wanted to let you know they were there in the background now, all circling the empty place in your brain where Lil Cal had taken up residence. 

You wander into the living area and take in the sight of Alternate Dave and Highblood having a not quite stand-off. “Really he’s a big teddy bear,” you tell Alt Dave as you head over to make yourself breakfast. 

“Uh huh, just like a sehlat,” Alt Dave says. 

You snort. “Something like that.” 

“I see you are kin,” Highblood says, looking amused. He gets his own breakfast and sits at the table. “Did you get your rest on, finally?” 

“You manage not to further traumatize the neighbors?” you ask in return. Highblood gives you a dirty look, but doesn’t say anything. 

“Neighbors?” Alt Dave asks. 

“Our nearest neighbors are some folks Highblood has some bad history with,” you explain. “And by bad history I mean he’s Torquemada and they are heretics. We’re working on keeping them from killing each other.” 

“You encroaching ashen again? Thought you were all mediating the olive bitch and Demoness,” Highblood mutters into his breakfast bowl. 

“This is completely non-romantic mediation on my part,” you tell him. “You’ve made it really we are not an ashen item.” You tell Alt Dave more of what you know about the neighbors and about Disciple’s first appearance. You are not touching the bit about being in clubs with Catskin and Demoness. (You have to explain “ashen” and then the other three quadrants to Alt Dave.) Highblood interjects when he isn’t happy with your version of events. He is extremely not happy with most of your version of events so he interjects a lot. “Anyway, Demoness brought back Dolorosa and Darkleer, some dude named Psiioniic or Mituna crash landed and they’re all camped out not far from here. I should probably introduce you or something.” 

“That’d be okay I guess,” Alt Dave says. “What if Rose ends up in the rutabagas like I did?” There’s a quirk to his mouth that makes you think this is not entirely a serious question. 

“Demoness will probably take her in, like she did you,” you say. 

“I hope not, waking up was kind of traumatic,” Alt Dave says. 

“You aggressed first,” Highblood said. “All in a rageful terror and confusion.” 

“Pretty sure you didn’t do much better, from what you’ve said, bro,” you say. 

Instead of bitching about ashing it up this time, he snorts. “True enough.” He finishes off his breakfast and gets up from the table. “You all do your wicked alien kinship rituals, I’m for my pile,” he says, and heads off for the bedroom. 

“Yeah, good morning, bro,” you tell him. 

“Wicked alien kinship rituals,” Alt Dave says. “Like, figuring out what the hell we’re going to call each other.” 

“I’ve been going with ‘Alt Dave’,” you say. “I’ve been introducing myself as ‘Dirk Strider,’ and all, but I was going by ‘Bro’ almost exclusively til the Game.” 

“I’ll go with ‘Alt Dirk,’” Alt Dave says. 

You nod, keeping your face still. You don’t know what you’re feeling at that, at deliberately not being “Bro,” at Alt Dave immediately rejecting calling you “Bro.” It’s something like pain, and something like an instinctive protest back in your head. “The kids can be lil Dirk and lil Dave,” you say. You’re oddly relieved by the minimal smile you get at that. 

The pair of you head out into the woods, where you meet up with one of the Demoness iterations. She has decided to recruit you to help her go talk to Disciple about building a house for her and her family. “I don’t know why you think I can mediate worth a shit, but I was going to introduce Alt Dave to the neighbors, so why not?” Demoness talks to Disciple and her family about their clearing land for a hive. Disciple does not like the idea of settling down. She wants to be on the move, looking for her boyfriend. You get the feel that she thinks staying in one place is like giving up on him. Dolorosa seems to be of a similar opinion. Zahhak suggests that having a base of operations would be sensible, but if Disciple decided otherwise he would support her. (Things go on a tangent as an argument erupts where Disciple is either educating a privileged blue blood or attacking him for having killed her boyfriend. How much is one or the other shifts dramatically for one or another during the argument.) They’re decided by the Psiioniic, who would not mind staying in one place for a while. 

It takes a few days before a suitable location is found. It’s a spot maybe an hour’s walk from the Hobbit Hole, a hill with a huge tree that’s shaded out its competitors, so there’s only grass and low lying plants on most of the hill. It’s near the same stream that goes by the Hobbit Hole. 

You and Alt Dave get drafted to help clear ground, dig out rooms, set wooden braces and pound the earth hard and flat. A Demoness comes by while you’re finishing up and does something to the walls so they turn to actual rock. There’s some argument about floor coverings that you don’t get--the argument is either sand or rushes or woven mats--and Mituna wants a lookout post in the tree. 

While you’re working on the new hive, a couple Demonesses turn up to clear ground for a big garden, which they plant with seedlings. Other Demonesses come by for apparent tutoring lessons in time-shit for Alt Dave. You’re well used to the temporal shenanigans but the neighbors and Alt Dave are not. They tend to stop and stare when multiple iterations turn up. 

Highblood does not take part in the barn-raising activities. He goes on patrol, but mostly sticks to the Hobbit Hole. This is not surprising, given the general animosity between him and Disciple’s people. You catch him a couple times going back for meals or to crash. “Their house is going to be a little bigger, more room for people to live,” you tell him over breakfast. “Alt Dave’s probably going to be living there.” 

“No lususish feel of separation for you?” Highblood asks. 

“Not really, he’s not my kid, he grew up on his own, managed not to fuck up too badly at it,” you say. It’s not sure it’s actually a truthful thing to say. Working with Alt Dave you had been struck by all kinds of speculations of what your kid might have been like if not for you. Maybe even a glimpse what he might have been like if not for the Game. “He was like in his fifties when he died, so it’s not like he needs a parent who died in his early thirties.” 

“My rustie ninjette says that I got a Descendant on the other side of that door she talks about,” Highblood says. “I don’t know what I’m to do about that. I was old as fuck when I died, and I still don’t think I can be someone’s Ancestor. We ain’t ever supposed to be meeting, that being a rarity that mostly happens to seadwellers.” 

“She tell you anything about him?” 

“Only that he was manipulated as I was,” Highblood says. He frowns, looking down at his huge hands. “As even she and the entire Empire was manipulated.” A pause and he looks up at you. “She says that he grew up alone, seldom seeing his lusus and he took to the crack panned habit of imbibing sopor to soothe that absence from his heart. I’ve a feeling brother that even a difficult lusus is a better lusus than sopor baked into a pie as a lusus.” 

It sounded like Highblood’s “Descendant” was also proving your theory about how much minimum socialization was actually required by a Player. “I don’t know. I’m coming to the awareness that I was a pretty shit lusus,” you tell Highblood. “You know if he’ll be okay, translating over? Because it sounds like this sopor stuff is going to lead to one crappy withdrawal.” 

“I think so,” he says. “I’ll take care of him if not. In the Church we all raised the wigglers together on planet before the Exile. Our lusii weren’t often the most attentive and had the inclination to wander. Trolls without that bond didn’t do so well if they didn’t have kin to care for them as a lusus would.” 

This sounded all snuggly and shit, except Highblood was basically Racist Uncle Ted who kept remarking that the Sons of Ham are Dark Skinned Because of His Sin. (And that black people were all descendants of Ham and so on.) So, you were guessing it was more like growing up in a cult compound. At the same time, you could feel all this nostalgic wistfulness coming from Highblood, and anger that he hadn’t been able to rescue any of his little brothers and sisters from negligent lusii after the Exile. You may have trouble keeping your extremely mixed reaction off your face. 

“You’ve no right to judge me,” he says with a glower. “Or speak ill of the Church.”

“Did I say anything?” you ask him. “Demoness does fine with that anyway, and I’d never step into her territory.” 

“I can see you thinking of it,” Highblood says. “The Church took care of me when I wasn’t more than a grub abandoned my useless fucking lusus. I grew up in the circus and under the sky, not shut up in some gated town or farm. We went all about looking for those of our blood to take them in and care for them and teach them the holy ways of the church.” 

“Still not saying anything,” you say. “This is _Demoness’_ territory.”

“I am too tired for argument,” Demoness says, appearing in the doorway of the Hobbit Hole. “So we will only say that Strider is an idiot and Highblood is wrong.” 

You snicker, and Highblood is clearly torn between whacking you upside the head and glaring at his lovebunny. “Girl,” he says reproachfully, glowering at Demoness. 

“No,” Demoness says, and goes to plop down beside Highblood. “The only reason our civilization didn’t collapse was because I held it together at my Master’s order. Not because of you. Not because of the Empress. Because I was told to.” 

“Anyone else saying that, I’d cull them for madness or just plain fucking unfunny,” Highblood says, pulling her into his lap. “But it’s you saying it’s so, so I’ll have to take your word as good.” 

Demoness reaches up and pats his cheek. 

“Well that’s a pretty clear signal to get lost,” you say, starting to get up. 

Demoness snickers at you. “Stay. Help me destroy some of Highblood’s stupidity.” 

“Demoness, what are you on about?” Highblood asks. 

You kind of wish you had your shades, so you could let them drop a bit and peer over them in an expression of _what the fuck._ “I don’t think I’m qualified to educate Highblood,” you tell her. “It wasn’t shit I ever cared about or bothered with because I was too focused on the Game back on Earth.” 

“You don’t care, but answer questions,” she says, pointing to where you were sitting. With a sigh you sit back down. “Do you think some blood castes are inherently subordinate and meant to serve, and be culled if they are unworthy?” she asks. 

“Gross,” you comment dryly. “No.” 

“Do you care if someone else thinks that?” 

You can’t help but give that some thought. “It would depend on how much in my grill they were. I wouldn’t care if they were off doing their own thing but if they were doing it in my face, I’d be pretty pissed.”

“Do these questions have a point?” Highblood asks.

“Kind of wondering that myself,” You say. “I mean, if you’re going for ‘see someone else agrees with me’ it’s gonna fail. I can see he’s determined to keep the faith and keep the voice of doubt gagged.” Also, you were the exact opposite of a good example of a supporter of social justice. 

Highblood frowns at you. “What did I tell you about looking where you’re not wanted?” 

“Bro, was it supposed to be hidden?” You ask. It wasn’t hidden at all, hadn’t been for the time you’ve known so far. It had been in their arguments, it had been in both Demoness’ and Highblood’s nightmares. You’d been picking up on it for a long while now. “It’s right out there in three foot neon. Kinda glad I’m an atheist here, not sure I could handle all that fear of damnation and having damned others.” 

Demoness paps Highblood as a growl rattles in his chest. “Don’t make mock of me,” he says. 

You hold your hands up. “No, that was pretty sincere. You’re fucked up and you don’t want to admit you’re fucked up. That you got lied to. I’m glad I don’t have the ability to have that kind of fucked up feeling. I don’t think you damned anyone, because there was nowhere to damn them too.” 

“Think you’re any less fucked up?” Highblood asked. “I’ve seen your own fears in the core of you. I could make you feel them, should I choose.” 

There's a tense moment and then Demoness says “Only you won’t,” and smacks one of his cheeks hard enough to be a slap instead of a pap. “I asked the questions because you listens a little bit. Just enough. I would not pity you if getting something through your rock-skull were easy." To you she says, "see? This time he is not throwing a highblood tantrum.” 

“Progress has happening,” you say under your breath. Something that sounds a little like the syntax from Dave's web comic. 

Demoness hears it of course. “Yes. Slow like continental shelves grinding,” Demoness says.

“Don’t know how I feel about you inviting folk to what should be a private pile,” Highblood says, combing Demoness’ short hair with his fingers, feathering the strands back. “Don’t so much as remember you suggesting such an activity.” 

“I was not asked to participate in this scene. I wasn’t even given a safeword,” you drone. “Pearls. They are being clutched.” 

“This is not even a pile,” Demoness says. “Prudes. Idiots. We can talk about safe small things now.” 


End file.
